The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws, I will here omit the discussion on laws and speak of arms.
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"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise."
"Men must either be caressed or annihilated; they will revenge themselves for slight wrongs, but not for great ones."
"Hatred is acquired as much by good works as by evil."
"There are three kinds of intellect: one which comprehends by itself; another that discerns what another comprehends; and a third which comprehends neither by itself nor by the showing of another."
"Wise men say, and not without reason, that whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times."
Florentine diplomat and political theorist whose The Prince (written 1513) became the founding text of political realism and gave us the adjective 'Machiavellian.' Closely associated with Francesco Guicciardini (fellow Florentine political analyst and historian). For an intellectual contrast, see Erasmus of Rotterdam, Dutch humanist and The Education of a Christian Prince author (1516) — Erasmus's princely-instruction manual was published three years after Machiavelli's, for the same European audience, and is the explicit Christian-virtue alternative to Machiavellian power-realism. The cleanest 'realism vs idealism' founding pairing in modern political theory.
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