511 Quotes by Niccolò Machiavelli

Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.

A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.

You have to be a prince to understand the people, and you have to belong to the people to understand the princes...

Forgiveness proceeds from a generous soul.

In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.

With difficulty he is beaten who can estimate his own forces and those of his enemy.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

The reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.