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Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.

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
States
Citizens
Liberties
Many
Hundred
Remained
Years
Liberty
Armed
Time
Four
Rome
Free
Forty
Less
Gun
Lost
Although
Sparta
Political
Eight
Disarmed

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We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.
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it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.
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You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.
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Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.
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For without invention, no one was ever a great man in his own trade.
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When they remain in garrison, soldiers are maintained with fear and punishment when they are then led to war, with hope and reward.
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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.
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God creates men, but they choose each other.
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Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
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The peasant wants only to be left alone to prosper in peace.
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There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.
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Every little advantage is of great moment when men have to come to blows.
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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.
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as the physicians say it happens in hectic fever, that in the beginning of the malady it is easy to cure but difficult to detect, but in the course of time, not having been either detected or treated in the beginning, it becomes easy to detect but difficult to cure
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We must distinguish between those who depend on others, that is between those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case, they always come to grief, having achieved nothing when, however, they depend on their own resources and can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered.
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God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.
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A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.
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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.
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