196 quotes found
“These opportunities, then, gave these men the chance they needed, and their great abilities made them recognize it.”
“Those who believe that where great personages are concerned new favors cause old injuries to be forgotten deceive themselves.”
“Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain.”
“It is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.”
“There are many who think a wise prince ought, when he has the chance, to foment astutely some enmity, so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness.”
“...no one should marvel at the ease with which Alexander [the Great] kept possession of Asia, or at the difficulties which others, like Pyrrhus and many more, had in preserving their conquests. The...”
“A prince ought to have two fears one from within on account of his subjects the other from without on account of external powers. From the latter he is defended by being well armed and having good ...”
“Considering thus how much honor is awarded to antiquity, and how many times—letting pass infinite other examples—a fragment of an ancient statue has been bought at high price because someone wants ...”
“Armour belonging to someone else either chops off you or weighs you down or is too tight”
“For no man is found so prudent as to know how to adapt himself to these changes, both because he cannot deviate from the course to which nature inclines him, and because, having always prospered wh...”
“... I believe that he will prosper most whose mode of acting best adapts itself to the character of the times; and conversely that he will be unprosperous, with whose mode of acting the times do no...”
“He listened to their opinions, stated his own, and supported them with reasons; and from his being constantly occupied with such meditations, it resulted, that when in command no complication could...”
“... From want of foresight men make changes which relishing well at first do not betray their hidden venom, as I have already observed respecting hectic fever. Nevertheless, the ruler is not truly ...”
“... Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to live in freedom and does no destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it. For if it should rebel, it can always screen itself under the name of...”
“... If instead of colonies you send troops, the cost is vastly greater, and the whole revenues of the country are spent in guarding it so that the gain becomes a loss, and much deeper offense is gi...”
“When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter th...”
“... He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new... partly f...”
“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.”
“Men always praise antiquity and fault the present, although not always reasonably, and they are partisans of things past such that not only do they celebrate those ages that they know from what his...”
“To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people”
