Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes

No proceeding is better than that which you have concealed from the enemy until the time you have executed it. To know how to recognize an opportunity in war, and take it, benefits you more than anything else. Nature creates few men brave, industry and training makes many. Discipline in war counts more than fury.

men change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves, and this hope induces them to take up arms against him who rules, wherein they are deceived because they afterward find by experience they have gone from bad to worse.

Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony

It is better to be feared than to be loved, if you can not be both

Power is the pivot on which everything hinges. He who has the power is always right; the weaker is always wrong.

He who causes another to become powerful ruins himself, for he brings such a power into being either by design or by force, and both of these elements are suspects to the one whom he has made powerful.

In the city of the blind, whoever has one eye is lord.

To govern more securely some Princes have disarmed their subjects...but by disarming, you at once give offence, since you show your subjects that you distrust them, either by doubting their courage, or as doubting their fidelity, each of which imputations begets hatred against you.

But in republics there is more vitality, more hatred, and more desire for revenge. The memory of former freedom simply will not leave the people in peace.

It's better to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.

Half of these aren't even Machiavelli.
Some are Plato, Thucydides etc....doesnt anyone check these?

...against my will, my fate,
A throne unsettled, and an infant state,
Bid me defend my realms with all my pow'rs, And guard with these severities my shores.

Verträge bricht man um des Nutzens willen.

The Romans never allowed a trouble spot to remain simply to avoid going to war over it, because they knew that wars don't just go away, they are only postponed to someone else's advantage. Therefore, they made war with Philip and Antiochus in Greece, in order not to have to fight them in Italy... They never went by that saying which you constantly hear from the wiseacres of our day, that time heals all things. They trusted rather their own character and prudence — knowing perfectly well that time contains the seeds of all things, good as well as bad.