Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Everything in life is a double-edged sword.

But everything you do in life has a downside.

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

No matter what we want of life we have to give up something in order to get it.

Political reforms, without exception, have a down side.

No human endeavour can ever be wholly good... it must always have a cost.

For everything you gain, you lose something.

You pay a price for everything in life.

Every solution breeds new problems.

You cannot do only one thing.

Saying 'yes' to one thing means saying 'no' to another. That's why decisions can be hard sometimes.

What's called a difficult decision is a difficult decision because either way you go there are penalties.

Starting off, all options are always open, but as soon as you choose something, you inevitably limit yourself. If you go for B, A is out.

It's impossible for someone who is human to have all good things together, just as there is no single country able to provide all good things for itself.

With everything great comes a price, always, right?

You know, we always tried to rationalize by saying you take the good, you take the upside, you got to deal with the downside, you've to take the downside.

The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace.

We must strike a balance between speed and thoroughness, between the need for time frames and the avoidance of mistakes which will later cost us dearly.

In human affairs the solution to every problem contains within it the seeds of a new problem.

All advantages are attended with disadvantages.

I've always said if I'm winning at one thing, I'm failing at another.

Choice is a form of compromise, no? So why choose if you can have both?

It's easy to want the benefits of something; it's hard to want the cost.

You know what I learned? Everything has a price.

Nothing is pure and entire of a piece. All advantages are attended with disadvantages. A universal compensation prevails in all conditions of being and existence.