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.

The forces of adversaries are more diminished by the loss of those who flee than of those who are killed.

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

....it cannot be called ingenuity to kill one's fellow citizens, to betray friends, to be without faith, without mercy, without religion; by these means one can aquire power but not glory.

There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.

In war, discipline can do more than fury.

The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.