A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.

There is nothing that Nature seems to have inclined us to as much as society.

Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so; but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.

In our own days we have seen no princes accomplish great results save those who have been accounted miserly.

The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body.

Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.