If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm.

A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.

There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things..... Whenever his enemies have occasion to attack the innovator they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him sluggishly so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable.

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.

the wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.