Knowing how to win is the first step. We must also know how to make use of our victories.

Nor ought we ever to allow any growing power to acquire such a degree of strength as to be able to tear from us, without resistance, our natural, undisputed rights.

The mob is easily led and may be moved by the smallest force, so that its agitations have a wonderful resemblance to those of the sea.

Since the masses of the people are inconstant, full of unruly desires, passionate, and reckless of consequences, they must be filled with fears to keep them in order. The ancients did well, therefore, to invent gods, and the belief in punishment after death.

Those who know how to win are much more numerous than those who know how to make proper use of their victories.

Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

The particular aspect of history which both attracts and benefits its readers is the examination of causes and the capacity, which is the reward of this study, to decide in each case the best policy to follow. Now in all political situations we must understand that the principle factor which makes for success or failure is the form of a state's constitution: it is from this source, as if from a fountainhead, that all designs and plans of action not only originate but reach their fulfillment.