Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.

Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.

A multitude is strong while it holds together, but so soon as each of those who compose it begins ro think of his own private danger, it becomes weak and contemptible.

A battle that you win cancels all your mistakes.

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.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror