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.

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.

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

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.

Politics have no relation to morals.