Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Governments almost never act with moral clarity and for very good reason. They are dealing with competing interests.

In political matters it is very hard for a man in office to be purer than his neighbours, — and, when he is so, he becomes troublesome.

A statesman cannot afford to be a moralist.

The purification of politics is an iridescent dream. Government is force.... The Decalogue and the Golden Rule have no place in a political campaign. The commander who lost the battle through the activity of his moral nature would be the derision and jest of history.

A ruler must learn to be other than good.

What good would politics be, if it didn’t give everyone the opportunity to make moral compromises?

So far as he is able, a prince should stick to the path of good but, if the necessity arises, he should know how to follow evil.

The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests.

A wise ruler ought never to keep faith when by doing so it would be against his interests.

Politics can be relatively fair in the breathing spaces of history; at its critical turning points there is no other rule possible than the old one, that the end justifies the means.

Governments acting in a crisis are guided by questions of expediency, and moral considerations are given very little weight, and that America is no different from any other nation in this respect.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality

A prudent ruler cannot and should not observe faith [keep his promises] when such observance is to his disadvantage.

Our modern politicians … claim that they are too practical to be pure and too patriotic to be moral.

Power shifts your thinking from what is right and wrong to what is necessary

In contriving any system of government, and fixing the several checks and controls of the constitution, every man ought to be supposed a knave, and to have no other end, in all his actions, than private interest.

The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.

Governor [Myron] Herrick is not a bad man; he is simply weak. He is one of those men who can do dishonest things honestly.

.In politics a man must learn to rise above principle.

If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious.

The princes who have done great things are the ones who have taken little account of their promises.

For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.

The people have nothing to fear of me; people have never feared me.

Every actual State is corrupt. Good men must not obey laws too well.

What most men call their conscience is imaginary virtue switching left or right according to self-interest.