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Republics have a longer life and enjoy better fortune than principalities, because they can profit by their greater internal diversity. They are the better able to meet emergencies.

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
Better
Profit
Life
Fortune
Principalities
Meet
Republics
Longer
Emergencies
Democracy
Internals
Greater
Internal
Enjoy
Republic
Able
Diversity

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Appear as you may wish to be
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It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes.
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For whoever conquers a free Town, and does not demolish it, commits a great Error, and may expect to be ruin 'd himself.
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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.
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Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.
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There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is simply unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed.
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To keep your actions and your plans secret always has been a very good thing . .. Marcus Crassus said to one who asked him when he was going to move the army: 'Do you believe that you will be the only one not to hear the trumpet?
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Impetuosity and audacity often achieve what ordinary means fail to achieve.
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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.
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If the present be compared with the remote past, it is easily seen that in all cities and in all peoples there are the same desires and the same passions as there always were.
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I hope and hoping feeds my pain I weep and weeping feeds my failing heart I laugh but the laughter does not pass within I burn but the burning makes no mark outside.
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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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A prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.
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Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.
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When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a greater obligation to their benefactor.
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For, in truth, there is no sure way of holding other than by destroying
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Because there are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself another which appreciates what others comprehend and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others the first is the most excellent, the second is good, the third is useless.
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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.
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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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(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