Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.

Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.

Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.

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

A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.

Some princes, so as to hold securely the state, have disarmed their subjects, others have kept their subject towns distracted by factions...Our forefathers, and those who were reckoned wise, were accustomed to say that it was necessary to hold Pistoia [an Italian city] by factions and Pisa by fortress, and with this idea they fostered quarrels in some of their tributary towns so as to keep possession of them the more easily.

The reformer has enemies in all who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.