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

The state is not an organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace...but merely a vehicle of power for the men and party in power.

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.

The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

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

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.