The state is not an organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace...but merely a vehicle of power for the men and party in power.

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

War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Therefore, it is necessary to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves

A battle that you win cancels all your mistakes.

And if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.