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

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.

Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist; the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.

For as laws are necessary that good manners be preserved, so there is need of good manners that law may be maintained.

Then also pretexts for seizing property are never wanting, and one who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others, whereas causes for taking life are rarer and more quickly destroyed.

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

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.