Niccolo Machiavelli

"He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command."

"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 they have free scope."

"It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles."

"Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions."

"Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked."

"Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared."

"Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others."

"Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot."

"Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds."

"One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others."

"Politics have no relation to morals."

"Princes and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society."

"The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it."

"There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt."

"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."

"To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people."

"War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans."