Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

A prudent ruler cannot and should not observe faith [keep his promises] when such observance is to his disadvantage.

I know people that I respect and admire and look up to who have had extra-marital affairs.

Next to hurting my family, cheating on me is the worst thing someone could do.

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

I have made it a rule of my life to trust a man long after other people gave him up, but I don't see how I can ever trust any human being again.

Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.

I once thought that I was the only man who persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for me to believe the white man anymore.

… all governments must frequently infringe the rules of justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to dissimulation, honesty to convenience, and humanity itself to the reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate.

Power shifts your thinking from what is right and wrong to what is necessary

For every betrayed woman, there is always the betrayer, man.

Machiavelli did believe that it was better to appear to be good than to be good. If you're good, you're just too vulnerable, but if you appear to be good, you get all the benefits plus you can be sneaky and, when necessary, stab someone in the back.

I think that in any language when you have a real relationship, and there is love and respect between people, infidelity is always something difficult to accept - whether you are Chinese, British, French. I think that is a universal concept... or problem.

For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.

Though I never scruple a lie to serve my Master, it hurts one's conscience to be found out!

If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm?

He who has trusted where he ought not will surely mistrust where he ought not.

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

(A ruler) cannot and should not keep his word when to do so would go against his interests or when the reason he pledged it no longer holds.

If you deceive someone, you lose one of life's greatest treasures, you lose the capacity to trust. Because without trust, love is not possible.

The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt.

There's a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.