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I'm not interested in preserving the status quo I want to overthrow it.

Niccolo Machiavelli

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Niccolo Machiavelli
Age: 58 †
Born: 1469
Born: May 3
Died: 1527
Died: June 22
Diplomat
Historian
Military Theorist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Political Theorist
Politician
Translator
Writer
Florence
Tuscany
Nicolo Machiavelli
Niccolo Machiavelli
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Nicolò Machiavelli
N. Machiavelli
Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Machiavelli
Preserving
Status
Thrive
Philosophical
Interested
Overthrow

More quotes by Niccolo Machiavelli

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If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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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.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Sometimes it has been of great moment while the fight is going on, to disseminate words that pronounce the enemies' captain to be dead, or to have been conquered by another part of the army. Many times this has given victory to him who used it.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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In order not to annul our free will, I judge it true that Fortune may be mistress of one half our actions but then even she leaves the other half, or almost, under our control.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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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.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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You do not know the unfathomable cowardice of humanity...servile in the face of force, pitiless in the face of weakness, implacable before blunders, indulgent before crimes...and patient to the point of martyrdom before all the violences of bold despotism.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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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.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from snares, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Thus it is well to seem merciful, faithful, humane, sincere, religious, and also to be so but you must have the mind so disposed that when it is needful to be otherwise you may be able to change to the opposite qualities.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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The forces of adversaries are more diminished by the loss of those who flee than of those who are killed.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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A prudent man... must behave like those archers who, if they are skillful, when the target seems too distant, know the capabilities of their bow and aim a good deal higher than their objective, not in order to shoot so high but so that by aiming high they can reach the target.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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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.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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How perilous it is to free a people who prefer slavery.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.
Niccolo Machiavelli
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But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. 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.
Niccolo Machiavelli