Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

No nation now sets forth to despoil another upon the avowed ground that it desires the spoils.

We will push those crooks, those mercenaries back into the swamp.

Being rapacious and arrogating subject's goods and women is what above all else ... renders the Prince hateful ... and leaves a mind obstinate to vengeance.

We should like to see such legislation as would beggar the lot of them and confiscate their roads, lands, rolling stock and all that is theirs.... These men have set themselves apart—have divorced their interests from those of all other classes. They have deliberately antagonized civilization and affronted humanity. Their methods are so exceptional that they can be reached only by exceptional methods. They have presumed on our reluctance to apply them.

God and nature have thrown all human fortunes into the midst of mankind; and they are thus attainable rather by rapine than by industry, by wicked actions rather than by good. Hence it is that men feed upon each other, and those who cannot defend themselves must be worried.

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.

The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.

Publishing companies are like schoolyard bullies that can't even fight well.

The world is ruled by violence, or at least the imminent threat of violence. It always has been.

The positive testimony of history is that the State invariably had its origin in conquest and confiscation. No primitive State known to history originated in any other manner.

And yet, those who speak loudly and call anyone who disagrees with them a wimp often do a disservice to the cause they are promoting.

A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.

Any society based on domination supports and condones violence.

The march of conquest through wild provinces, may be the march of Mind; but not the march of Love.

Violence - look, we live in a violent world, man. This country was founded on violence. Who's kidding who?

Everybody in Afghanistan ought to know we’re coming in and hells coming with us.

To robbery, butchery and rapine they give the lying name “government;” they create a desolation and call it peace.

Man’s greatest good fortune is to chase and defeat his enemies, take all his goods, leave his older women weeping, ride his horses, and use the bodies of his younger women at night.

The people have been plundered by profiteers... [Saying] that is not demagogy; it is democracy—the democracy of Jefferson. It is not radicalism; it is republicanism—the republicanism of Lincoln.

What right have the rulers of nations to unsheath the sword of destruction, and to let loose the demons of desolation upon mankind, whenever caprice or pride, ambition or avarice, shall prescribe?

The loggers are more powerful than we are …. There is bribery everywhere.