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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.

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
Dupes
Color
Hypocrite
Simple
Prince
Nature
Immediate
Wells
Yield
Well
Necessity
Much
Lack
Never
Deceiver
Men
Necessary

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Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.
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Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.
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It is better to be adventurous than cautious, because fortune is a woman.
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Only those means of security are good, are certain, are lasting, that depend on yourself and your own vigor.
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Is it better to be loved or feared?
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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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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.
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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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Laa shay'a waqi'un moutlaq bale kouloun moumkine...We work in the Dark, to serve the Light.
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Still, a prince should make himself feared in such a way that if he does not gain love, he at any rate avoids hatred for fear and the absence of hatred may well go together, and will be always attained by one who abstains from interfering with the property of his citizens and subjects or with their women.
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Men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation.
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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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Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.
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Many have dreamed up republics and principalities that have never in truth been known to exist the gulf between how one should live and how one does live is so wide that a man who neglects what is actually done for what should be done learns the way to self-destruction rather than self-preservation.
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For as good habits of the people require good laws to support them, so laws, to be observed, need good habits on the part of the people.
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It has always been the opinion and judgment of wise men that nothing can be so uncertain as fame or power not founded on its own strength.
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There is nothing that Nature seems to have inclined us to as much as society.
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Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.
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One should never fall in the belief that you can find someone to pick you up.
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