Philosophy Quote by Niccolò Machiavelli — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”

“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.”

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”

“Men ought either to be well treated or crushed, because they can avenge themselves of lighter injuries, of more serious ones they cannot; therefore the injury that is to be done to a man ought to be of such a kind that one does not stand in fear of revenge.”

“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.”

“A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one's own ignorance.”

“Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.”

“It takes too much energy to be against something unless it's really important.”

“Here is your great soul—the man who has given himself over to Fate; on the other hand, that man is a weakling and a degenerate who struggles and maligns the order of the universe and would rather reform the gods than reform himself.”

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!”

“I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful”