No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

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

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

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

Never was anything great achieved without danger.

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

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

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.

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

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.

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.

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

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

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.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

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.

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

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.