Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense. Benefits ought to be handed out drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more.

Politically, you can’t do pain without the gain.

What the Puritans gave the world was not thought, but action.

Punishment cannot heal spirits, can only break them.

Little changes are the enemies of great changes.

Everything looks like a failure in the middle

Most of the time we do not know what we have learned till long after we learned it.

The long run may be too long.

Organizational changes to fix the problems usually create new vulnerabilities in the process of fixing the old ones.

It is easy to say that something should be done. However to say what, when and how is more difficult.

Old mismanagement is no excuse for the continuance of it.

We have shaken things up when necessary.

Trying to do more with less only means we will do nothing.

..Well, we've had a good growl.

There was a time that you could say the least government was the best—but not in the nation's most populous state.

Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management.

A right decision at the wrong time is a wrong decision.

Attention shouldn't be on finding ways to build a better government; we should be looking at how to get government out of our lives.

You don’t make changes until you see a positive advantage for change.

I can solve every problem a year later.

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

I hope to stand firm enough not to go backward, and yet not go forward fast enough to wreck the common cause.

Be not afraid of going slowly; be afraid only of standing still.

It is important to view philanthropic ventures with an eye for business.

there is a real question as to whether "bigness" in a body politic is not an evil in itself, quite aside from the policies pursued in its name.