Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

So in all human affairs one notices, if one examines them closely, that it is impossible to remove one inconvenience without another emerging.

Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.

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

For government consists in nothing else but so controlling subjects that they shall neither be able to, nor have cause to do [it] harm.

Conquered states that have been accustomed to liberty and the government of their own laws can be held by the conqueror in three different ways. The first is to ruin them; the second, for the conqueror to go and reside there in person; and the third is to allow them to continue to live under their own laws, subject to a regular tribute, and to create in them a government of a few, who will keep the country friendly to the conqueror