Niccolo Machiavelli

“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”

“The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.”

“War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.”

“Politics have no relation to morals.”

“He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.”

“War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.”

“Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”

“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.”

“We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.”

“Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.”

“A son can bear with equanimity the loss of his father, but the loss of his inheritance may drive him to despair.”

“Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.”

“It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.”

“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.”

“Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.”

“Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.”

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.”

“I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”