Top 100 Machiavelli's Quotes
#1. I'm Machiavelli's offspring, I'm the king of New York, king of the coast, one hand, I juggle them both.
Kendrick Lamar
#2. Christopher Lynch has made the best and the first careful translation of Machiavelli's Art of War. With useful notes, an excellent introduction, an interpretive essay, glossary, and index, it is a treasure for readers of military history and Renaissance thought as well as for lovers of Machiavelli.
Harvey Mansfield
#3. All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.
Mary McCarthy
#4. These books ain't window dressing. I think Machiavelli's the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin' ass.
Mike Tyson
#5. Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Lord Acton
#6. This modern interpretation of Machiavelli's landmark work is perhaps more useful for the modern reader than the original text. His dense ideas have been boiled down to their essence and presented in language that can be easily grasped by the modern mind.
Brandon Musk
#7. A wise man will see to it that his acts always seem voluntary and not done by compulsion, however much he may be compelled by necessity.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#9. A wise prince will seek means by which his subjects will always and in every possible condition of things have need of his government, and then they will always be faithful to him.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#10. Half of these aren't even Machiavelli.
Some are Plato, Thucydides etc ... doesnt anyone check these?
Niccolo Machiavelli
#11. But in republics there is more vitality, more hatred, and more desire for revenge. The memory of former freedom simply will not leave the people in peace.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#12. A prince who is not himself wise cannot be wisely advised ... Good advice depends on the shrewdness of the prince who seeks it, and not the shrewdness of the prince on good advice.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#13. You ought never to suffer your designs to be crossed in order to avoid war, since war is not so to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#14. I consider it a mark of great prudence in a man to abstain from threats or any contemptuous expressions, for neither of these weaken the enemy, but threats make him more cautious, and the other excites his hatred, and a desire to revenge himself.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#15. So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honor, they are satisfied.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#17. You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#18. The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#19. There is no avoiding war, it can only be postponed to the advantage of your enemy.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#20. And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defense.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#21. The wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#22. There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#23. It cannot be called ingenuity to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can aquire power but not glory.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#24. Simon called you 'Machiavelli disguised as a debutante.'" "Gosh," I said, not sure whether to feel flattered or insulted.
Michelle Cooper
#26. Men judge more from appearances than reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.
Everyone sees your exterior, but few can
discern what you have in your heart.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#27. I say that every prince ought to desire to be considered clement and not cruel. Nevertheless he ought to take care not to misuse this clemency.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#28. And above all you ought to guard against leading an army to fight which is afraid or which is not confident of victory. For the greatest sign of an impending loss is when one does not believe one can win.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#29. Discontented inhabitants who willingly admit a foreign power either through excessive ambition or through fear, as was the case with the Etolians, who admitted the Romans into Greece. So it was with every province that the Romans entered: they were brought in by the inhabitants themselves.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#30. What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'
Michael Ignatieff
#31. And yet we cannot define as skillful killing one's fellow citizens, betraying one's friends, and showing no loyalty, mercy, or moral obligation. These means can lead to power, but not glory.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#33. It's better to be loved than feared, but if you can't be loved, then fear will do.-Dino quoting Machiavelli
Laurell K. Hamilton
#34. Whence we may draw the general axiom, which never or rarely errs, that he who is the cause of another's greatness is himself undone, since he must work either by address or force, each of which excites distrust in the person raised to power.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#35. It's foolish to call Chanakya an Indian Machiavelli. Rather, Machiavelli was possibly an Italian Chanakya.
Ashwin Sanghi
#36. But since a Prince should know how to use the beast's nature wisely, he ought of beasts to choose both the lion and the fox; for the lion cannot guard himself from the toils, nor the fox from wolves. He must therefore be a fox to discern toils, and a lion to drive off wolves.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#37. Don't be creative. Don't be stupid."
"That's what Machiavelli said. You guys really have a lot of faith in me, don't you?"
"Neither one of us wants to lose you. Just be careful, Billy. Careful is my middle name."
Black Hawk rolled his eyes. "You told me it was Henry.
Michael Scott
#38. IT IS customary for such as seek a Prince's favour, to present themselves before him with those things of theirs which they themselves most value, or in which they perceive him chiefly to delight.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#39. Machiavelli is right: one always must live with one's friends with the idea that they may turn into one's enemies. He should have said, with everyone.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#40. So what? Somebody's always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions." Martha
Clifford Stoll
#41. He who is the cause of another's advancement is thereby the cause of his own ruin.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#42. Set down among these lice, this is how I keep the mold from my brain and find release from Fortune's malice. I am content to have her beat me down this way to see if she won't become ashamed.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#43. Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#44. One should never risk one's whole fortune unless supported by one's entire forces.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#45. Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#46. In peace one is despoiled by the mercenaries, in war by one's enemies.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#47. Nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#48. We are all bits and pieces of history and literature and international law, Byron, Tom Paine, Machiavelli or Christ, it's here. And the hour's late. And the war's begun. And we are out here, and the city is there, all wrapped up in its own coat of a thousand colors.
Ray Bradbury
#49. All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#50. Kautilya makes Machiavelli look like Mother Teresa
Wendy Doniger
#51. Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#52. For as laws are necessary that good manners may be preserved, so there is need of good manner that laws may be maintained.
[It., Perche, cosi come i buoni costumi, per mantenersi, hanno bisogno delli leggi; cosi le leggi per ossevarsi, hanno bisogno de' buoni costumi.]
Niccolo Machiavelli
#53. Among other causes of misfortune which your not being armed brings upon you, it makes you despised ...
Niccolo Machiavelli
#54. If in other respects the old condition of things be continued, and there be no discordance in their customs, men live peaceably with one another ...
Niccolo Machiavelli
#55. Princes should devolve on others those matters that entail responsibility, and reserve to themselves those that relate to grace and favour.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#57. The state is not an organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace ... but merely a vehicle of power for the men and party in power.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#58. When you disarm your subjects, however, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#59. Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#61. There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#63. Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#64. Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#65. (A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#66. 'The Prince' was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. 'Rules for Radicals' is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
Saul Alinsky
#67. I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.
No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#68. Benefits should be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#69. Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#70. As a general thing anyone who is not your friend will advise neutrality while anyone who is your friend will ask you to join him, weapon in hand.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#71. For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#73. When one would ask most modern artists, poets, writers and other status quo fueled semi-intellectuals who Machiavelli was - was that an opera singer?
Martijn Benders
#74. I say, then, that hereditary States, accustomed to the family of their Prince, are maintained with far less difficulty than new States, since all that is required is that the Prince shall not depart from the usages of his ancestors, trusting for the rest to deal with events as they arise.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#75. Nothing consumes itself so much as generosity, because while you practise it you're losing the wherewithal to go on practising it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#76. It's not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli. I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever's gonna make you achieve your goal.
Tupac Shakur
#77. Without doubt, ferocious and disordered men are much weaker than timid and ordered ones. For order chases fear from men and disorder lessens ferocity.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#79. Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#80. Like Machiavelli himself, he [Edward Luttwak] enjoys truth not only because it is true but also because it shocks the naive
Eric Hobsbawm
#81. When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a greater obligation to their benefactor ...
Niccolo Machiavelli
#82. Hence it comes that all armed prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed prophets have been destroyed.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#83. Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.
Victor Hugo
#84. Men are so self-complacent in their own affairs, and so willing to deceive themselves, that they are rescued with difficulty from this pest. If they wish to defend themselves they run the risk of becoming contemptible.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#85. People are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#87. A man who wishes to profess at all times will come to ruin among so many who are not good.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#88. Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#89. Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#90. The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms - you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#91. Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation.
Robert Foster Bennett
#92. (About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors.
Frederick The Great
#93. Master the rules of the game until you can play it better they can.
Michael Scott
#95. Anyone who becomes master of a city accustomed to freedom and does not destroy it may expect to be destroyed by it; for such a city may always justify rebellion in the name of liberty and its ancient institutions.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#97. Better and happier those who, recognizing that everything is fictitious, write the novel before someone writes it for them and, like Machiavelli, don courtly garments to write in secret.
Fernando Pessoa
#98. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#99. The wish to acquire is no doubt a natural and common sentiment, and when men attempt things within their power, they will always be praised rather than blamed. But when they persist in attempts that are beyond their power, mishaps and blame ensue.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#100. There's no getting away from the fact that, if ever a man required watching, it's Steggles. Machiavelli could have taken his correspondence course.
P.G. Wodehouse
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