When you disarm the people, you commence to offend them and show that you distrust them either through cowardice or lack of confidence, and both of these opinions generate hatred.

It is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman.

The world has always been the same; and there is always as much good fortune as bad in it.

Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion.

I say that every prince must desire to be considered merciful and not cruel. He must, however, take care not to misuse this mercifulness.

He who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows.

A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.