Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries - for heavy ones they cannot.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are... →
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned.... →
It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.
Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.
Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act... →