Fear is secured by a dread of punishment.
Never was anything great achieved without danger.
Thus it is well to seem merciful faithful humane religious and upright and also to be so but the mind should remain so balanced that were it needful not to be so you should be able and know how to cha...
Nevertheless, that our freewill may not be altogether extinguished, I think it may be true that fortune is the ruler of half our actions, but that she allows the other half or a little less to be gove...
One never finds anything perfectly pure and ... exempt from danger.
Men hesitate less to injure a man who makes himself loved than to injure one who makes himself feared for their love is held by a chain of obligation which because of men's wickedness is broken on...
For Time, driving all things before it, may bring with it evil as well as good.
The distinction between children and adults, while probably useful for some purposes, is at bottom a specious one, I feel. There are only individual egos, crazy for love.
Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.
ما يمكن التنبؤ بة يمكن علاجة بسهولة، أما اذا انتظرنا الئ ان تداهمنا المخاطر، فسيصبح العلاج متأخراً عن موعده وتستصعي العلة
It is far better to earn the confidence of the people than to rely on fortresses.
The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them.
For a Monarchy readily becomes a Tyranny, an Aristocracy an Oligarchy, while a Democracy tends to degenerate into Anarchy. So that if the founder of a State should establish any one of these three for...
And let it here be noted that men are either to be kindly treated, or utterly crushed, since they can revenge lighter injuries, but not graver.
It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever th...
Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.
The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws...
It is truly natural and ordinary thing to desire gain; and when those who can succeed attempt it, they will always be praised and not blamed. But if they cannot succeed, yet try anyway, they are guilt...
He said that it always struck him with surprise that while men in buying an earthen or glass vase would sound it first to learn if it were good, yet in choosing a wife they were content with only look...
For on Cardinal Rohan saying to me that the Italians did not understand war, I replied that the French did not understand politics.