Quotes About Machiavelli

One who begins to live by rapine will always find some reason for taking the goods of others

He was not a scholar, and he did not have the temperament of one who finds knowledge an end in itself.

This it happens in affairs of state, for when the evils that arise have been foreseen (which it is only given to a wise man to see), they can be quickly redressed, but when, through not having been foreseen, they have been permitted to grow in a way that every one can see them, there is no longer a remedy.

hardly any ruler lives so long as to have time to accustom to right methods a city which has long been accustomed to wrong. Wherefore

In The Prince Machiavelli mounts two distinct lines of intellectual and political attack, one against the baseness of Medicean statecraft, the other against the too-strict Ciceronian conception of politics. Against both traditions, he elaborates a new 'art of the state'. He openly declares himself to be an expert in this art.

The truth is that Machiavelli did try to obtain a position from the Medici, but he did not write The Prince in order to win their favour. 3 He was hoping to be offered a new post in recognition of his unquestionable competence in the 'art of the state' and as a reward for his abilities and impeccable honesty, not as a gift in reward for flattery. As he wrote in the famous letter to Francesco Vettori of 10 December 1513:

Machiavelli moralizes on the resemblance between Fortune and women, and concludes that it is the bold rather than the cautious man that will win and hold them both.

There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.

From this a general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that predominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.

But in republics there is more vitality, greater hatred, and more desire for vengeance, which will never permit them to allow the memory of their former liberty to rest; so that the safest way is to destroy them or to reside there.

Por ello las acciones que en un caso pueden poner diques a la fortuna y resultar virtuosas, en el otro pueden fracasar; por ello también el par virtud/fortuna tiene una acepción unipersonal e individual en el primer caso (el recogido en El príncipe) y otra colectiva y republicana en el segundo (el de los Discursos).

in the long run a ruler must avoid being hated by his people and must always put their interests before those of the aristocracy; the people are so many, Machiavelli reflected, that power ultimately lies with them.

1492, muerte de Lorenzo el Magnifico; descubrimiento de América y la unidad del imperio español con el fin de los reinos musulmanes en España.

hailed the Florentine as the first modern thinker to have exposed the nature of political tyranny.

Machiavelli is not an evil genius, nor a demon, nor a miserable and cowardly writer; he is nothing but the fact. And he is not only the Italian fact; he is the European fact, the fact of the sixteenth century. He seems hideous, and so he is, in the presence of the moral idea of the nineteenth.

What's distinctively shocking about Machiavelli is that he didn't care. He believed not only that politicians must do evil in the name of the public good, but also that they shouldn't worry about it. He was unconcerned, in other words, with what modern thinkers call 'the problem of dirty hands.'

Leonardo may have gone to work with Borgia at the behest of Machiavelli and Florence's leaders as a gesture of goodwill, similar to the way he had been dispatched twenty years earlier to Milan as a diplomatic gesture to Ludovico Sforza. Or he may have been sent as a way for Florence to have an agent embedded with Borgia's forces. Maybe it was both. But either way, Leonardo was no mere pawn or agent. He would not have gone to work for Borgia unless he wanted to.

F]ortune governs one half of our actions, but even so she leaves the half more or less in our power to control." Even in this area of apparent control, it would be necessary to adapt to circumstances. Free will suggested the possibility of fitting events to an established character; Machiavelli suggested that the character would be shaped by events.

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government.

But unlike Machiavelli, Confucius was concerned more with the cultivation of social harmony than with the machinations of power. His themes were the principles of compassionate rule, the performance of correct rituals, and the inculcation of filial piety.

So what? Somebody's always had control over information, and others have always tried to steal it. Read Machiavelli. As technology changes, sneakiness finds new expressions." Martha

When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.

A man of nothing who has started out from nothing starting out from an unassignable place: these are, for Machiavelli, the conditions for regeneration.