One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves

There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.

A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.

If someone puts up the argument that King Louis gave the Romagna to Pope Alexander, and the kingdom of Naples to Spain, in order to avoid a war, I would answer as I did before: that you should never let things get out of hand in order to avoid war. You don't avoid such a war, you merely postpone it, to your own disadvantage.

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.

For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

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.