Niccolò Machiavelli

For in­jur­ies ought to be done all at one time, so that, be­ing tasted less, they of­fend less; be­ne­fits ought to be given little by little, so that the fla­vour of them may last longer.

And again, he need not make him­self un­easy at in­cur­ring a re­proach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with dif­fi­culty, for if everything is con­sidered care­fully, it will be found that some­thing which looks like vir­tue, if fol­lowed, would be his ruin; whilst some­thing else, which looks like vice, yet fol­lowed brings him se­cur­ity and prosper­ity.

Mer­cen­ar­ies and aux­il­i­ar­ies are use­less and dan­ger­ous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are dis­united, am­bi­tious, and without dis­cip­line, un­faith­ful, vali­ant be­fore friends, cow­ardly be­fore en­emies; they have neither the fear of God nor fi­del­ity to men, and de­struc­tion is de­ferred only so long as the at­tack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the en­emy.

e must keep his hands off the prop­erty of oth­ers, be­cause men more quickly for­get the death of their father than the loss of their pat­ri­mony

There­fore a prince, so long as he keeps his sub­jects united and loyal, ought not to mind the re­proach of cruelty; be­cause with a few ex­amples he will be more mer­ci­ful than those who, through too much mercy, al­low dis­orders to arise, from which fol­low murders or rob­ber­ies;

Know­ledge doth come of learn­ing well re­tained,
Un­fruit­ful else,

is in ref­er­ence to Pope Julius that 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.

Ma­chiavelli has painted Ferdin­and of Aragon as the man who ac­com­plished great things un­der the cloak of re­li­gion, but who in real­ity had no mercy, faith, hu­man­ity, or in­teg­rity; and who, had he al­lowed him­self to be in­flu­enced by such motives, would have been ruined.

I have wished either that no hon­our should be given it, or else that the truth of the mat­ter and the weight­i­ness of the theme shall make it ac­cept­able.

the phys­i­cians say it hap­pens in hec­tic fever, that in the be­gin­ning of the mal­ady it is easy to cure but dif­fi­cult to de­tect, but in the course of time, not hav­ing been either de­tec­ted or treated in the be­gin­ning, it be­comes easy to de­tect but dif­fi­cult to cure. 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 every­one can see them, there is no longer a rem­edy.