Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

I'm really good at pretending.

It is of great consequences to disguise your inclination, and to play the hypocrite well.

Neither man nor angel can discern Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks Invisible, except to God alone.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

Discretion is the polite word for hypocrisy.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

Be a hypocrite if you like, but don't talk like one.

Your face, my thane, is as a book where men May read strange matters. To beguile the time, Look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, Your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under't.

The whole world is run on bluff.

I've been fooling the public for years and I'm really good at it.

Only a genius can play a fool.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.

I'm not acting, but I am acting.

You often see politicians who try to put on a different persona; they think they should be more jolly or serious. Invariably, the persona they choose is worse than their own.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Too often in politics the stiletto is slipped between your shoulder blades, while its wielder continues to smile sweetly.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. That’s usually enough.

Set of Vipers

You have to live with the people in hypocrisy for them to stay happy with you.

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

Talleyrand is a silk stocking filled with mud.