Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Machiavellian. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Machiavellian Quotes And Sayings by 97 Authors including Theodore Dalrymple,Ambrose Philips,Arthur C. Clarke,Anthony Trollope,Ambrose Bierce for you to enjoy and share.
One of the characteristics of modern political life is its professionalization, such that it attracts mainly the kind of people with so great an avidity for power and self-importance that they do not mind very much the humiliations of the public exposure to which they are inevitably subjected.
Studious of ease, and fond of humble things.
Futilitarianism.
Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires them to be imperious.
WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him it should be said that he did not want to.
He is an honorable, obstinate, truthful, high-spirited, intensely prejudiced, perfectly unreasonable man.
He who does not know how to deceive does not know how to rule.
In the history of political thinking, there has been always a polar conflict between ethical and the ruthless realistic thoughts of men in general where every greater thought brings in faster understanding yielding an exciting result so fast.
The man of power is ruined by power, the man of money by money, the submissive man by subservience, the pleasure seeker by pleasure.
Greedy for the property of others, extravagant with his own
It's foolish to call Chanakya an Indian Machiavelli. Rather, Machiavelli was possibly an Italian Chanakya.
A small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler.
A tyrant has uncommon moral compass.
Statesman, yet friend to truth! of soul sincere, In action faithful, and in honour clear; Who broke no promise, serv'd no private end, Who gain'd no title, and who lost no friend.
A public school-educated stockbroker, who wants to shrink the state and let the markets rip, who reinvented himself as a man of the people and convinced millions of disillusioned working-class voters he was on a mission to smash the rich elite he belonged to.
(About Cesare Borgia) What cruelties were not the result of his? Who could count all his crimes? Such was the man that Machiavel prefers to all the great geniuses of his time, and to the heroes of antiquity, and of which he finds the life and action make a good example for those that fortune favors.
I worry that when you start quoting Machiavelli to justify your actions, you have ceased to be one of the good guys.
No, quoting Nietzsche does that. Machiavelli is just cool.
A patient, methodical sort of madman. The worst kind.
Sagacious agent could, I suppose, be desired,
Vlad was cunning to the point of being a sociopath.
A modern gentleman [rich person] is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.
Rich. Handsome. Privileged. Heartless.
Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.
What's a political?"
"Like a spy, but on your own side," said Maladict
Oh for someone with a heart, head and hand. Whatever they call them, what do I care, aristocrat, democrat, autocrat, just be it one that can rule and dare not lie.
Machiavelli did believe that it was better to appear to be good than to be good. If you're good, you're just too vulnerable, but if you appear to be good, you get all the benefits plus you can be sneaky and, when necessary, stab someone in the back.
A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies.
a virtuous person,
You are a devious woman, Blackthorn,' she said.
'I prefer the term strategic thinker.
Voter: someone smart enough to choose how to be fooled.
The American: a titan enamored of progress, a fanatical giant who worships "getting things done" but never asks himself what he is doing nor why he is doing it.
There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bush's presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted 'from the gut,' and was economical with the truth until it disappeared.
One must be cunning and wicked in this world.
He was something in between. Steadfast in pursuit but adaptable. Charming yet respectful. In other words, complex.
Ruthless is not necessarily the word I would use, but tough, resolute, understanding what the problems are, and understanding that the job of the president of the United States is to protect the people of this country and to do what is necessary in order to get it done.
The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal.
Cynic: an idealist whose rose-colored glasses have been removed, snapped in two and stomped into the ground, immediately improving his vision
Cynical is a fool's word for realist.
In just 20 years terrorism, communications, the jet plane and the increase of wealth and knowledge have forced, to varying degrees, world leaders into a haunted and secret peerage whose links with the people they guide are meticulously cleansed and staged.
An aristocrat in morals as in mind.
Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
It was a powerful man indeed who could mix integrity with savvy.
Idealist: a cynic in the making.
A general rule is drawn which never or rarely fails: that he who is the cause of another becoming powerful is ruined; because that pre-dominancy has been brought about either by astuteness or else by force, and both are distrusted by him who has been raised to power.
Tactics are manipulative.
How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.
Who holds a power but newly gained is ever stern of mood.
In taking stock of a politician, the first question is not whether he was a good man who used righteous means, but whether he was successful in gaining power, in keeping it, and in governing; whether, in short, he was skilful at his particular craft or a bungler.
[William] Klein has eyes like a knife. He is ruthless and outrageous but never mean - he is tender and funny and violent - and, I'm sure, really in love with our crazy Rome.
Thus Gonzo, incendiarist and leader of men.
Can you care for the people and rule the country and not be cunning?
To hold power has always meant to manipulate idiots and circumstances; and those circumstances and those idiots, tossed together, bring about those coincidences to which even the greatest men confess they owe most of their fame
One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
Some book reviewer whose name I forget recently called me a 'vicious misanthrope' ... or maybe it was a 'cynical misanthrope' ... but either way, he (or she) was right; and what got me this way was politics.
Any fool with ambition and heartlessness can be a ruler.
kind of person who could achieve anything if only he wasn't dysfunctional enough not to.
Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.
All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty.
Revolutionary in my ideas, liberal in my objectives and conservative in my methods.
Reactionary: One who wants the rules enforced so nobody can take his pile away from him the way he got it from others.
Cynicism. I liked that in a man.
A man who is half an idiot, but who keeps a sharp lookout and acts prudently all his life, often enjoys the pleasure of triumphing over men of more imagination than he
To be seduced by Orators, as a Monarch by Flatterers.
He is noble who both feels and acts nobly.
Ambition ... the original of vices;
Mother of hypocrisy, parent of envy, engineer of deceit
Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.
This was the noblest Roman of them all. All the conspirators save only he Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; [70] He only in a general honest thought And common good to all made one of them. His
The cool, lithe, cynical, and unconquered lord of the housetops.
a fully flowered narcissist.
The mastermind, the man with the plan
I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.
So that over time, clever became cunning. Dynamic became obsessed. Ambitious became ruthless.
[I am] loyal, ambitious and clever.
Strategists who don't take time to think are just planners.
Cardinal Mazarin was a great knave, but no great man; much more cunning than able; scandalously false and dirtily greedy.
Each day, a new crisis, a new massacre, a new threat of extinction, disease, internecine conflict, meteorological catastrophe... Behold man. Violent, self-serving and ruthless when in power; exploited, miserable and diseased when not.
I'm a pragmatist.
Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.
He was a hard shrewd jovial politician, whose acts of kindness served his interest and whose interest was himself. His type is panhuman. I had met him on Earth, and on Hain, and on Ollul. I expect to meet him in Hell.
Idiot! Lunatic! Moron! Jackass! Selfish irresponsible fool!
Powerful people come from all walks of life and leave their mark upon the world in a variety of ways. But one thing is common to them all. They move through the world with pure vitality. It is as though all their switches have been turned on.
Ambition fortifies the will of man to become ruler over other men: it operates with deception, cajolery, and violence, it is the action of impurity upon impurity.
What this White House really needs is a chief of staff who can read Machiavelli in the original Italian.
A real diplomat is one who can cut his neighbor's throat without having his neighbor notice it.
Human beings betray their worst failings when they marvel to find that a world ruler is neither foolishly indolent, presumptuous, nor cruel.
Power gravitates to the man who knows how.
Masters of the bluff and masters of the proposition, but the enemy I see wears a cloak of decency.
The politician dispenses wealth which other men have produced, and we say he is "compassionate," while the businessman who produces the wealth is dismissed as "greedy" and "materialistic.
What man is a man who does not make the world better?
An agile but unintelligent and abnormal German, possessed of the mania of grandeur.
"Lawyers Are": By law's dark by-ways he has stored his mind with wicked knowledge on how to cheat mankind.
As modern tyrannies are swept away (and every honest heart delights), the quick-thinking servants of the world's great powers still proffer plans to intervene, to jostle, scheme and sponsor factions that they barely understand.
I am increasingly convinced that people who have power are not necessarily smarter than others. Beyond a certain level of intelligence and level in the hierarchy, everyone is smart. What differentiates people is their political skill and savvy.
The admiration of power in others is as common to man as the love of it in himself; the one makes him a tyrant, the other a slave.
Virtuous and fair, royal and gracious.
He'd never believed that power, in any shape or form, was anything more than the intemperate protrusion on the egomaniacal heart. Since all egomaniacs were insecure to their frightened cores, they this weilded "power" barbarically so the world would not find them out
Successful ... politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies.
He who burns with ambition to become aedile, tribune, praetor, consul, dictator, cries out that he loves his country and he loves only himself.
Imperious, choleric, irascible, extreme in everything, with a dissolute imagination the like of which has never been seen, atheistic to the point of fanaticism, there you have me in a nutshell, and kill me again or take me as I am, for I shall not change.
The appetite for power, even for universal power, is only insane when there is no possibility of indulging it; a man who sees the possibility opening before him and does not try to grasp it, even at the risk of destroying himself and his country, is either