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

Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.

How laudable it is for a prince to keep good faith and live with integrity, and not with astuteness, every one knows. Still the experience of our times shows those princes to have done great things who have had little regard for good faith, and have been able by astuteness to confuse men's brains, and who have ultimately overcome those who have made loyalty their foundation.

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

The wish to acquire is in truth very natural and common, and men always do so when they can.but when they cannot do so, yet wish to do so by any means, then there is folly and blame.

Never do your enemy a minor injury.

There should be many judges, for few will always do the will of few.