Impetuosity and audacity often achieve what ordinary means fail to achieve.

The answer is, of course, that it would be best to be both loved and feared. But since the two rarely come together, anyone compelled to choose will find greater security in being feared than in being loved.

Sometimes it has been of great moment while the fight is going on, to disseminate words that pronounce the enemies' captain to be dead, or to have been conquered by another part of the army. Many times this has given victory to him who used it.

Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred; for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and subjects or with their women.

For this is the tragedy of man circumstances change, but he does not.

For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.

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