Top 250 Niccolò Machiavelli Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

152. “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

153. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

161. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

164. “When fortune wishes to bring mighty events to a successful conclusion, she selects some man of spirit and ability who knows how to seize the opportunity she offers.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

165. “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

166. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

172. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

174. “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

175. “Appear as you may wish to be.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

178. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

182. “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

183. “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

184. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

186. “The greatest remedy that is used against a plan of the enemy is to do voluntarily what he plans that you do by force.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

187. “All the armed prophets conquered; all the unarmed ones perished.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

188. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

190. “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

191. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

195. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

197. “He who has once begun to live by rapine always finds reasons for taking what is not his.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

199. “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

200. “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