Quotes About Authority

Quelli li quali per vie virtuose, simili a costoro, diventono principi, acquistono el principato con difficultà, ma con facilità lo tengano;

Di che si cava una regola generale, la quale mai o raro falla: che chi è cagione che uno diventi potente, ruina; perché quella potenzia è causata da colui o con industria o con forza; e l'una e l'altra di queste dua è sospetta a chi è diventato potente.

E debbasi considerare come non è cosa più difficile a trattare, né più dubia a riuscire, né più pericolosa a maneggiare, che farsi capo ad introdurre nuovi ordini.

Politics have no relation to morals.

All armed prophets succeed whereas unarmed prophets fail.

Men are less worried about letting down someone who has made himself loved than someone who makes himself feared.

E chi le acquista, volendole tenere, debbe avere dua respetti: l'uno, che il sangue del loro principe antiquo si spenga; l'altro, di non alterare né loro legge né loro dazii; talmente che in brevissimo tempo diventa, con loro principato antiquo, tutto uno corpo.

A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.

Moreover, men are less careful how they offend him who makes himself loved than him who makes himself feared. For love is held by the tie of obligation, which, because men are a sorry breed, is broken on every whisper of private interest; but fear is bound by the apprehension of punishment which never relaxes its grasp.

Those princes who have done great things … in the end have overcome those who relied on their word.

A wise prince must devise ways by which his citizens are always and in all circumstances dependent on him and on his authority; and then they will always be faithful to him.

Alexander the Sixth did nothing else but deceive men, nor ever thought of doing otherwise, and he always found victims; for there never was a man who had greater power in asserting, or who with greater oaths would affirm a thing, yet would observe it less.

Every one sees what you seem, but few know what you are, and these few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many who have the majesty of the State to back them up.

The actions of a new prince are more narrowly observed than those of an hereditary one.

As to how a Prince is to know his Minister, this unerring rule may be laid down. When you see a Minister thinking more of himself than of you, and in all his actions seeking his own ends, that man can never be a good Minister or one that you can trust.

Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to feared than loved.

it is not reasonable that he who is armed should yield obedience willingly to him who is unarmed

Çünkü gerçekten sahiplenebilmek için yak?p y?kmaktan baÅŸka bir çare de yoktur. Ve özgürce yaÅŸamaya al???k bir kenti ele geçiren biri eÄŸer o kenti yak?p y?kmazsa, kendisi o kent taraf?ndan yak?l?p y?k?lmay? bekliyor demektir.

When the duke occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave them more cause for disunion than for union, so that the country was full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon

There cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

The Prince before its first legal publication in English in 1640

Machiavelli was in constant trouble for failing to keep the politicians properly informed of what he was up to. 16 One cannot help but feel his behavior suggests a professional civil servant's contempt for the amateurs from whom he was obliged to take his instructions, an attitude that could easily have led him to long for more authoritarian government.

Returning to the question of being feared or loved, I come to the conclusion that, men loving according to their own will and fearing according to that of the prince, a wise prince should establish himself on that which is in his own control and not in that of others; he must endeavour only to avoid hatred, as is noted.