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

....those who become princes through their skill acquire the pricipality with difficulty, buy they hold onto it with ease.

Ability and perseverance are the weapons of weakness.

He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.

Besides what has been said, people are fickle by nature; and it is a simple to convince them of something but difficult to hold them in that conviction; and, therefore, affairs should be managed in such a way that when they no longer believe, they can be made to believe by force.

States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them

In order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that Fortune may be mistress of one half our actions but then even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.