For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.

In respect to foresight and firmness, the people are more prudent, more stable, and have better judgement than princes.

Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and subjects or with their women.

Nothing is of greater importance in time of war than in knowing how to make the best use of a fair opportunity when it is offered.

It has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain as fame or power not founded on its own strength.

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.

If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.