Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Human nature is not of itself vicious.

Mencius said that human nature is good. I disagree with that.

Goodness is equally hateful to the wicked, as vice is to the virtuous.

Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.

For never, never, wicked man was wise.

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

For Aristotle, goodness is a kind of prospering in the precarious affair of being human.

Evil is not something superhuman, it's something less than human.

I'm very interested in good and evil and the moral natures of people.

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

I feel it's in people's nature to want to stop evil and embrace the good.

Only a writer who has the sense of evil can make goodness readable.

Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity.

Piety is the most solid goodness, and the vilest of what is evil is vice.

A good man can be stupid and still be good. But a bad man must have brains.

Men are more moral than they think and far more immoral than they can imagine.

Evil is always possible. Goodness is a difficulty.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Even in this glowering age, morality animates our lives with meaning.

One of the darkest evils of our world is surely the unteachable wildness of the Good.

We must not indulge in unfavorable views of mankind, since by doing it we make bad men believe they are no worse than others, and we teach the good that they are good in vain.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it.

All men are born good.

Evil does not grow out of the soil, nor does mischief spring from the ground. Only man is born to do mischief, just as sparks fly upward.

I do not believe with the Rochefoucaults and the Montaignes that fourteen out of fifteen men are rogues. I believe a great abatement from that proportion may be made in favor of general honesty.