Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.

Never do your enemy a minor injury.

Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.

Knowing how to fight made men more bold, because no one fears doing what it seems to him he has learned to do. Therefore, the ancients wanted their citizens to be trained in every warlike action.

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

Men are driven by two principal impulses, either by love or by fear.

The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body.