The leader should know how to enter into evil when necessity commands.

A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.

....nothing is so unhealthy or unstable as the reputation for power that is not based on one's own power.

For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.

All the armed prophets conquered; all the unarmed ones perished.