All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

To know well the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to know well the nature of princes one must be of the people.

When every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove themselves elsewhere.

They have not any difficulties on the way up because they fly, but they have many when they reach the summit.

Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.

If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.

It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.