So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honor, they are satisfied.

A son could bear with great complacency, the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair.

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.

The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions...Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress, and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.