A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.

Men are more apt to be mistaken in their generalizations than in their particular observations.

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality; for how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather bring about his own ruin than his preservation.

One must be a fox to recognize traps and a lion to frighten wolves

Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared.