Prime ministers require the hide of a rhinoceros, the morals of St. Francis, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the leadership of Napoleon, the magnetism of a Beatle and the subtlety of Machiavelli.
— Lester B. Pearson
Colorful Machiavelli quotations
As in Machiavelli, the bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being; but the possession of land in nondependent tenure is now the material basis for bearing of arms.
In the United States today, the Declaration of Independence hangs on schoolroom walls, but foreign policy follows Machiavelli.
Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
What this White House really needs is a chief of staff who can read Machiavelli in the original Italian.
The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power.
Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.
I have never been over concerned or obsessed with opinion polls or popularity polls. I think a leader who is, is a weak leader. Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless.
Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith.
Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation.
The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs.
Machiavelli says that if as a ruler you accept that your every action must pass moral scrutiny, you will without fail be defeated by an opponent who submits to no such moral test. To hold on to power, you have not only to master the crafts of deception and treachery but to be prepared to use them where necessary.
Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are.
He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.
All ideas advanced to deal with the Florentine noise problem, the Florentine traffic problem, are Utopian, and nobody believes in them, just as nobody believed in Machiavelli's Prince, a Utopian image of the ideally self-interested despot.
There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you’ve got is everything - and I mean everything - being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.
These books ain't window dressing. I think Machiavelli's the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin' ass.
If you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force, or cunning. Like Machiavelli says, "Fronte otra forze." And neither of these two "virtues" is suited to an artist. The artist has to stay intelligent.
No matter how different our First Ladies have been - and as individual women they have ranged from recluses to vibrant hostesses to political manipulators on a par with Machiavelli - they have all shared the unnerving experience of facing a job they did not choose.
It's better to be loved than feared, but if you can't be loved, then fear will do.-Dino quoting Machiavelli
Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called self-interestedness. This was not a
In the 16th century, [Niccolò] Machiavelli - in an attempt to get back in the good graces of the powerful - wrote a slim volume called The Prince. In that book he showed the powers that be how to control the people. That book is a statement: separate and rule, divide and conquer. That's five hundred years ago and it still works, because we allow ourselves to be lead around with holes through our noses.
[Niccolò] Machiavelli said it's better to be feared than to be loved.
If you had a front row seat at the Renaissance, you would have seen Machiavelli come by plotting, and you would have seen murders in the streets, you would have seen violence, you have seen people burning books and it would have looked like the world was a horrible place, but that's where all these incredible stuff we're still living with comes out of.
Machiavelli is right: one always must live with one's friends with the idea that they may turn into one's enemies. He should have said, with everyone.
The most superficial fact regarding the 'Discourses,' the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy's 'History,' compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli's two books and with an enormous blasphemy.
When the last of the Reformers died, religion, instead of emancipating the nations, had become an excuse for the criminal art of despots. Calvin preached, and Bellarmine lectured; but Machiavelli reigned.
Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.
It's not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli.
I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever's gonna make you achieve your goal.
"War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;
" and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature.
Christopher Lynch has made the best and the first careful translation of Machiavelli's Art of War. With useful notes, an excellent introduction, an interpretive essay, glossary, and index, it is a treasure for readers of military history and Renaissance thought as well as for lovers of Machiavelli.
Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and gives the whole show away. The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.
C++ tries to guard against Murphy, not Machiavelli.
In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to 'enter into evil.' This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still.
Machiavelli taught me it was better to be feared than loved.
Because if you are loved they sense you might be weak. I am a man of the people and help them but it is important to do so through strength.
Power politics existed before Machiavelli was ever heard of;
it will exist long after his name is only a faint memory. What he did, like Harvey, was to recognize its existence and subject it to scientific study.
Have you any idea how to wake a hibernating Elder?” Machiavelli shook his head. “Mars, what about you? Any advice?” “Yes. Don’t.