Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

A passion for politics stems usually from an insatiable need, either for power, or for friendship and adulation, or a combination of both.

Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.

The only prize much cared for by the powerful is power.

We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.

Politics is the art of controlling your environment.

Our public figures are often narcissists, utterly self-absorbed in their quest for power.

Of course I'd have loved to be Prime Minister. But I'm not nursing a grievance.

You've got to have an ego as big as Mars to want to think that you, of all people, are better than anyone else to be president of the United States. People that vain, they want their place in history, and they want to be able to control how much they'll be worshipped by future generations.

I would rather have peace in the world than be President.

My plan is to govern as long as I can.

If you cannot trust our leaders, you cannot govern.

Politics. The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

Power is more satisfying to some than wealth.... Power is, indeed, a heady thing—whether it be a King, a President, a Legislature, a Court, or an Administration agency that is concerned.

The people who own the country ought to govern it.

The fellow that has power is the one who uses it sparingly ... I had more power when I went into office than when I went out.

The people are difficult to govern: It is because those in authority are too fond of action [change].

Anyone who gets to the top in politics is a control freak.

I have no ambition to govern men. It is a thankless office.

Political ambition, like other kinds of ambition, is a basic human appetite …. Like other human appetites, ambition is not evenly distributed among the population, but enough people with substantial political ambition are naturally drawn to political careers to make the problem of controlling it a major aspect of constitutional government.

Arab governments, at the end of the day, care most about remaining in power.

To be frank, politics is about wanting power, getting it, exercising it, and keeping it.

Men in power are always interested in greater power.

Men's bodies are our women's works of art. Given to us power of control, we will never carelessly throw them in to fill up the gaps in human relationships made by international ambitions and greeds ... War will pass when intellectual culture and activity have made possible to the female an equal share in the governance of modern national life; it will probably not pass away much sooner; its extinction will not be delayed much longer.

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them.

Yahya Khan wasn't interested in the government of the country, he was interested in power for its own sake and nothing else.