The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

One never finds anything perfectly pure and ... exempt from danger.

Men generally decide upon a middle course, which is most hazardous, for they know neither how to be entirely good nor entirely bad.

Prudence therefore consists in knowing how to distinguish degrees of disadvantage.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.

It is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved? It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

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.