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.

When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere.

Therefore it is unnecessary for a prince to have all the good qualities I have enumerated, but it is very necessary to appear to have them.

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.

Never do your enemy a minor injury.

Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.

Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.