War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

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

Hence it comes that all armed Prophets have been victorious, and all unarmed Prophets have been destroyed.

We must distinguish between those who depend on others, that is between those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case, they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when, however, they depend on their own resources and can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered.

A wise prince then...should never be idle in times of peace but should industriously lay up stores of which to avail himself in times of adversity so that when fortune abandons him he may be prepared to resist her blows.

There is nothing that Nature seems to have inclined us to as much as society.