Tao Te Ching
Machiavelli
(Niccolò Machiavelli)
1469 – 1527 CE
Unjustly vilified by history as well as his contemporaries, Machiavelli is known as the “founder of modern political science,” a major influence on the USA’s founding fathers, and the development of modern science. Personified with unscrupulous, immoral political activity, devious deceit, realpolitik and evil tyrants; many of history’s true heroes like Spinoza, Rousseau, Francis Bacon, John Milton, Montaigne, and Descartes secretly considered him an inspiration for the Enlightenment that followed 200 years later. Rousseau thought his book The Prince - far from condoning - was not written as advice to ruler who already understood these principles but rather satirically exposed their corrupt methods to the common people. Not the source for the quote, “The end justifies the means,” Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson considered him a “partisan of liberty” and John Adams seriously studied his philosophy and used it to clarify the Constitution’s idea of mixed government.
Eras
Western
Renaissance (1304 – 1576 CE)Chinese
Ming dynasty (1368 – 1644 CE)Sources
Unlisted Sources
Quotes by Machiavelli (50 quotes)
“The more sand that escapes from our life’s hourglass, the more clearly we can see through it”
from The Prince
Chapters:
76. The Soft and Flexible
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“Although you may have fortresses, they will not save you if you are hated by the people.”
from The Prince
Chapters:
17. True Leaders
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“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few see clearly.”
from The Prince
Chapters:
21. Following Empty Heart
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“Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”
from The Prince
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“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.”
from The Prince
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“Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.”
from The Prince
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“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
from The Prince
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“A new prince, like David should exalt the humble and depress the great, ‘filling the hungry with good things, and sending the rich empty away.’”
from Discourses on Livy
Chapters:
77. Stringing a Bow
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“Monarchies quickly becomes Tyrannies, Aristocracies Oligarchies, Democracies degenerate into Anarchy… no precaution can prevent them from sliding into their opposites because of how closely the virtue resembles the vice.”
from Discourses on Livy
Chapters:
18. The Sick Society
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“Let no man lose heart from thinking that he cannot do what others have done before him… men are born, and live, and die, always in accordance with the same rules.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Everything that occurs in the world, in every epoch, has something that corresponds to it in ancient times.”
from Discourses on Livy
Chapters:
40. Returning
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“There is nothing more important than appearing to be religious.”
from The Prince
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“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”
from The Prince
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“Above all things, good policy is to prevent treasuries and monies in a state from being gathered into a few hands.”
from The Prince
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“There are 3 classes of intellects: one that comprehends by itself; one that appreciates what others comprehend; and a third that neigher comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others. The first is excellent, the second good, the third useless.”
from The Prince
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“To experience constant success, it's necessary to change habits and attitudes, to recreate yourself according to the changing times.”
from The Prince
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“The first opinion one forms of someone and of his understanding, is by seeing those he has around him.”
from The Prince
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“Always choose the lesser evil never imagining that you can decide on a perfectly safe course. You can never avoid one trouble without running into another one.”
from The Prince
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“It is better to act and repent than not to act and regret.”
from The Prince
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from The Prince
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“A prince should have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else to study than the art of war, its rules and discipline.”
from The Prince
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“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past. Human events always resemble those of earlier times because human nature doesn't change, people are always animated by the same passions and so produce the same results.”
from The Prince
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“Valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin. From disorder, order springs; from order, valor (virtue).”
from History of Florence
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“Religion is the most necessary and assured support of any civil society... there never was a successful lawgiver who did not resort to divine authority, as otherwise his laws would not have been accepted by the people.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“The nearer people are to the Roman Church, the less religious they are... Possibly the Christian religion would have been entirely extinguished by its corruption had not St Francis restored it to its original principles”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Benefits should be granted little by little so that they may be better enjoyed.”
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“The envious nature of men, so prompt to blame and so slow to praise, makes the discovery and introduction of any new principles and systems as dangerous almost as the exploration of unknown seas and continents”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Those who read what the beginning of Rome was, and what her lawgivers and her organization, will not be astonished that so much virtue would have maintained itself during so many centuries; and that so great an empire should have sprung from it afterwards.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“When a prince, a nobility, and the power of the people are combined under the same constitution, these three powers will watch and keep each other reciprocally in check.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“The majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities, and are often more influenced by the things that seem than by those that are.”
from The Prince
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“A man who wishes to act entirely up to this professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him”
from The Prince
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“Injuries should be done all at one time—being tasted less, they offend less. Benefits should be given little by little—so that the flavor of them may last longer.”
from The Prince
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“Make men understand that to tell you the truth does not offend you... Those who do otherwise are either overthrown by flatterers, or so often changed by varying opinions that they fall into contempt.”
from The Prince
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“Cunning and deceit will serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Politics have no relation to Morals.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Domestic revolutions are most commonly occasioned by people who have property because the fear of losing what they have begets in them the same passions that burn in the hearts of those who desire to seize property because men think they own securely only those things that they have taken or defended successfully from others.”
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“Whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight, they fight from ambition.”
from The Prince
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“One of the great secrets of the day is to know how to take possession of popular prejudices and passions, in such a way as to introduce a confusion of principles”
from The Prince
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“we should wish to be both; but since love and feared can hardly exist together and if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.”
from The Prince
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“Men often deceive themselves in believing that by humility they can overcome insolence.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“he to whom he has from cowardice conceded the one thing will not be satisfied but will want to take other things from him, and his arrogance will increase as his esteem for the prince is lessened.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“slow resolves are invariably injurious... it is well in all deliberations to come at once to the essential point, and not always to remain in a state of indecision and uncertainty... tardiness helps no one, and generally injures yourself.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“it is impossible to explain one's self when in doubt and indecision as to what is to be done... when we have decided upon that, it will be easy to accommodate our words to our acts.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“any one whose ambition so far misleads him as to call in strangers to aid in his defense, seeks to acquire that which he will not be able to hold.,,, to gratify a present desire, they think not of the evils which will in a short time result from it.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“Those present at any deliberative assemblies of men will have observed how erroneous their opinions often are... contrary to all reason... preference given to what common error approves, what is suggested by men more desirous of pleasing the masses than of promoting the general good.”
from Discourses on Livy
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“the people often, deceived by an illusive good, desire their own ruin; and, unless made sensible of the evil of the one and the benefit of the other course, they will expose the republic to infinite peril and damage”
from Discourses on Livy
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“I slip off my days clothes and enter the ancient courts of men of old; and for two hours I forget all my cares, I know no more trouble, death loses its terrors: I am utterly translated in their company.”
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“all kinds of governments are defective; those three which we have qualified as good because they are too short lived, and the three bad ones because of their inherent viciousness.”
from Discourses on Livy
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Quotes about Machiavelli (8 quotes)
“We live today in the shadow of a Florentine... Niccoló Machiavelli who wrote a grammar of power, not only for the 16th century, but for all the ages that have followed… he came close to setting down the imperative way which men govern and are governed in political communities, whatever the epoch and whatever the governmental structure.”
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“If Machiavelli had had a prince for disciple, the first thing he would have reommended him to do would have been to write a book against Machiavellism.”
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“Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of liberty in the midst of his country's oppression... this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers.”
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“The authentic interpreter of Machiavelli, is the whole of later history.”
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“Machiavelli was able to return to the world on a more etherial plane, on which his effect on the world has been vastly greater... he succeeded in transmuting his practical energies into a series of mighty intellectual works which have been the seeds of our modern, Western political philosophy.”
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“The contradiction between the teaching of The Prince and that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers. The Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; for it is that Court it most clearly portrays.”
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“The ancient law giver was a benevolent myth; the modern law giver is a terrifying reality. The world has become more like that of Machiavelli than it was, and the modern man who hope to refute his philosophy must think more deeply than seemed necessary in the 19th century.”
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“Machiavelli made a deep and lasting impression upon me, shook my earlier faith... he thought it possible to restore something like the Roman Republic... but Machiavelli also sets side by side with this the notion of Christian virtues”
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