Top 250 Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “It is often found that modesty and humility not only do no good, but are positively hurtful, when they are shown to the arrogant who have taken up a prejudice against you, either from envy or from any other cause.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

152. “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.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

153. “Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

154. “Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

156. “For this is the tragedy of man circumstances change, but he does not.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

157. “Princes should delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures and keep in their own hands the means of winning favours.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

158. “You have to be a prince to understand the people, and you have to belong to the people to understand the princes...”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

159. “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.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

160. “To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

161. “And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

162. “You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

163. “A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain to their greatness, at any rate he will get some tinge of it.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

164. “Whoever is the cause of another becoming powerful, is ruined himself.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

165. “Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

166. “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.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

167. “The innovator has for enemies all who have done well under the old, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

168. “But in Republics there is a stronger vitality, a fiercer hatred, a keener thirst for revenge. The memory of their former freedom will not let them rest; so that the safest course is either to destroy them, or to go and live in them.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

169. “So long as the great majority of men are not deprived of either property or honor, they are satisfied.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

170. “Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

171. “It is better to be bold than too circumspect, because fortune is of a sex which likes not a tardy wooer and repulses all who are not ardent.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

172. “Appear as you may wish to be.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

173. “For one change always leaves a dovetail into which another will fit.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

174. “Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

175. “Men seldom rise from low condition to high rank without employing either force or fraud, unless that rank should be attained either by gift or inheritance.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

176. “We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

177. “Speaking generally, men are ungrateful, fickle, hypocritical, fearful odanger and covetous ogain.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

178. “The world has always been the same; and there is always as much good fortune as bad in it.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

179. “Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

180. “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.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

181. “I consider it a mark of great prudence in a man to abstain from threats or any contemptuous expressions, for neither of these weaken the enemy, but threats make him more cautious, and the other excites his hatred, and a desire to revenge himself.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

182. “War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

183. “Few men are brave by nature, but good discipline and experience make many so.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

184. “The new ruler must determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He must inflict them once and for all.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

185. “Necessities can be many, but the one that is stronger is that which constrains you to win or to die.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

186. “Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

187. “No one should therefore fear that he cannot accomplish what others have accomplished, for, men are born, live, and die in quite the same way they always have.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

188. “Results are often obtained by impetuosity and daring which could never have been obtained by ordinary methods.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

189. “For it must be noted, that men must either be caressed or else annihilated; they will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear his vengeance.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

190. “Men as a whole judge more with their eyes than with their hands.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

191. “A prince ought to have two fears, one from within, on account of his subjects, the other from without, on account of external powers.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

192. “Human beings remain constant in their methods of conduct.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

193. “Men are always averse to enterprises in which they foresee difficulties.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

194. “Ognuno vede quello che tu pari, pochi sentono quello che tu se.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

195. “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.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

196. “Rome remained free for four hundred years and Sparta eight hundred, although their citizens were armed all that time; but many other states that have been disarmed have lost their liberties in less than forty years.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

197. “A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

198. “The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

199. “It makes him hated above all things, as I have said, to be rapacious, and to be a violator of the property and women of his subjects, from both of which he must abstain.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

200. “Change has no constituency.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli