Leadership quotes

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Remember the difference between a boss and a leader; a boss says “Go!” – a leader says “Let’s go!”  ~E.M. Kelly

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility.  He says “I was beaten,” he does not say “My men were beaten.”  ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A leader leads by example, whether he intends to or not.  ~Author Unknown

Leadership is action, not position.  ~Donald H. McGannon

You can’t lead anyone else further than you have gone yourself.  ~Gene Mauch

The leadership instinct you are born with is the backbone.  You develop the funny bone and the wishbone that go with it.  ~Elaine Agather

You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.  ~Anthony J. D’Angelo, The College Blue Book

Example is not the main thing in influencing others.  It is the only thing.  ~Albert Schweitzer

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.  ~Robert Jarvik

You do not lead by hitting people over the head.  That’s assault, not leadership.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Nothing so conclusively proves a man’s ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself.  ~Thomas J. Watson

If two or three persons should come with a high spiritual aim and with great powers, the world would fall into their hands like a ripe peach.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

A leader is a dealer in hope.  ~Napoleon Bonaparte, attributed

Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.  ~Tom Peters

One measure of leadership is the caliber of people who choose to follow you.  ~Dennis A. Peer

A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.  ~John C. Maxwell

A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists.
~Witter Bynner, The Way of Life According to Laotzu

The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.  ~Henry Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart

If you wish a general to be beaten, send him a ream full of instructions; if you wish him to succeed, give him a destination, and bid him conquer.  ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827

 

I am more afraid of an army of one hundred sheep led by a lion than an army of one hundred lions led by a sheep.  ~Charles Maurice, Prince de Talleyrand-Périgord

A man is only a leader when a follower stands beside him.  ~Mark Brouwer

I suppose that leadership at one time meant muscle; but today it means getting along with people.  ~Indira Gandhi

Leaders need to be optimists.  Their vision is beyond the present.  ~Rudy Giuliani

A leader leads by example not by Force.  ~Sun Tzu

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.  ~Golda Meir

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.  ~Theodore Roosevelt

He led his regiment from behind –
He found it less exciting.
But when away his regiment ran,
His place was at the fore, O.
~W.S. Gilbert

Leadership is based on a spiritual quality; the power to inspire, the power to inspire others to follow.  ~Vince Lombardi

We have great managers who haven’t spent a day in management school.  Do we have great surgeons that haven’t spent a day in surgical school?  ~Henry Mintzberg

Every leader needs to look back once in a while to make sure he has followers.  ~Author Unknown

The art of leadership is saying no, not yes.  It is very easy to say yes.  ~Tony Blair

There is a significant difference between a leader and a cheerleader.  ~Author Unknown

Leadership:  the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command.  Very often, that person is crazy.  ~Dave Barry, “Things That It Took Me 50 Years to Learn”

No man is a leader until his appointment is ratified in the hearts and minds of his men.  ~Author Unknown

Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.  ~Anne Bradstreet

A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved.  He inspires the power and energy to get it done.  ~Ralph Nader

Inside my empty bottle I was constructing a lighthouse while all the others were making ships.  ~Charles Simic

Management is nothing more than motivating other people.  ~Lee Iacocca

There go my people.  I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.  ~Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

I am not a labor leader.  I don’t want you to follow me or anyone else.  If you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of the capitalist wilderness you will stay right where you are.  I would not lead you into this promised land if I could, because if I could lead you in, someone else could lead you out.  ~Eugene V. Debs

To lead the people, walk behind them.  ~Lao-Tzu

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership.  ~Eric Hoffer

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Business quotes

Related link          Business World | Jobs Listing | Blackstone Expert

In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins:  cash and experience.  Take the experience first; the cash will come later.  ~Harold Geneen

A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.  ~Henry Ford

Business is a combination of war and sport.  ~André Maurois

The absolute fundamental aim is to make money out of satisfying customers.  ~John Egan

Wise are those who learn that the bottom line doesn’t always have to be their top priority.  ~William Arthur Ward

Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

It is not the employer who pays the wages.  He only handles the money.  It is the product that pays the wages.  ~Henry Ford, 1922, also sometimes quoted as “It is the customer that pays the wages”

Hire character.  Train skill.  ~Peter Schutz

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.  ~Henry David Thoreau

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency.  The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.  ~Bill Gates

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus puerisque, 1881

I don’t pay good wages because I have a lot of money; I have a lot of money because I pay good wages.  ~Robert Bosch

In college, Yuppies major in business administration.  If to meet certain requirements they have to take a liberal arts course, they take Business Poetry.  ~Dave Barry

Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in man.  ~Author Unknown

Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.  ~Edward R. Murrow

Make the workmanship surpass the materials.  ~Ovid

A criminal is a person with predatory instincts who has not sufficient capital to form a corporation.  ~Howard Scott

The executive exists to make sensible exceptions to general rules.  ~Elting E. Morison

There are so many men who can figure costs, and so few who can measure values.  ~Author Unknown

For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few.  Here are the choices most of us face in such a system:  Get bitter or get busy.  ~Bill O’Reilly, about capitalism

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.  ~Bill Gates, Business @ the Speed of Thought

People that pay for things never complain.  It’s the guy you give something to that you can’t please.  ~Will Rogers

To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart.  ~Thomas Watson, Sr.

I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.  ~Alan Greenspan

Men err when they think they can be inhuman exploiters in their business life, and loving husbands and fathers at home.  ~Smiley Blanton

Let’s be honest.  There’s not a business anywhere that is without problems.  Business is complicated and imperfect.  Every business everywhere is staffed with imperfect human beings and exists by providing a product or service to other imperfect human beings.  ~Bob Parsons

Successful enterprises are usually led by a proven chief executive who is a competent benevolent dictator.  ~Richard Pratt

The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.  ~Henry Ford

The NBA is never just a business.  It’s always business.  It’s always personal.  All good businesses are personal.  The best businesses are very personal.  ~Mark Cuban

It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality.  ~Harold Geneen

You can’t file a conversation.  ~Author Unknown

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.  Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak.  ~Jay Leno

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.  ~Confucius

It is unfortunate we can’t buy many business executives for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth.  ~Malcolm Forbes

Too many people think only of their own profit.  But business opportunity seldom knocks on the door of self-centered people.  No customer ever goes to a store merely to please the storekeeper.  ~Kazuo Inamori

A man of business may talk of philosophy; a man who has none may practise it.  ~Alexander Pope, Thoughts on Various Subjects, 1727

Government in the U.S. today is a senior partner in every business in the country.  ~Norman Cousins

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself:  that is robbery.  To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get:  that is business.  Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.  ~Octave Mirbeau, Torture Garden

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business.  Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer.  ~Dale Carnegie

A consultant is a man sent in after the battle to bayonet the wounded.  ~Author Unknown

The results of quality work last longer than the shock of high prices.  ~Author Unknown

It doesn’t matter how many times you fail.  It doesn’t matter how many times you almost get it right.  No one is going to know or care about your failures, and neither should you.  All you have to do is learn from them and those around you because… All that matters in business is that you get it right once.  Then everyone can tell you how lucky you are.  ~Mark Cuban

Commerce, n. A kind of transaction in which A plunders from B the goods of C, and for compensation B picks the pocket of D of money belonging to E.  ~Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic’s World Book, 1906

You can fool all the people all the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough.  ~Joseph E. Levine

All roads goes to Rome. ~Aldi Sky. W, Chamber.com

 

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Nietzsche quotes

Memorable Quotes and quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche German philosopher (1844 – 1900)

Also Sprach Zarathustra, NIetzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist, section 16
– In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– “Every man has his price.” This is not true. But for every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing. To win over certain people to something, it is only necessary to give it a gloss of love of humanity, nobility, gentleness, self-sacrifice – and there is nothing you cannot get them to swallow. To their souls, these are the icing, the tidbit; other kinds of souls have others.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Maturity consists in having rediscovered the seriousness one had as a child at play.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– For a significant man
woman, the one thought he values greatly, to the laughter and scorn of insignificant men, is a key to hidden treasure chambers; for those others, it is nothing but a piece of old iron.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– At the bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique human being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time.

Friedrich Nietzsche – from the book Lies my Teacher Told Me. By James W. Loewen (1995)
– Memory says, I did that. Pride replies, I could not have done that. Eventually memory yields.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Ecce Homo, Foreword
– The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The World to Power, section 1064
– This world is the will to power – and nothing besides!

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Der Fall Wagner, Section 5
– Only sick music makes money today.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Every extension of knowledge arises from making the conscious the unconscious.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 283
– For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and greatest enjoyment is – to live dangerously.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Human, All Too Human
– People who comprehend a thing to its very depths rarely stay faithful to it forever. For they have brought its depths into the light of day: and in the depths there is always much that is unpleasant to see.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– There are no facts, only interpretations.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
– Digressions, objections, delight in mockery, carefree mistrust are signs of health; everything unconditional belongs in pathology.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Also Sprach Zarathustra, Chapter 29
– But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 116
– Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Without music, life would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows us that faith proves nothing.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

Friedrich Nietzsche – “Human, All Too Human” page 87, #120.
– If the belief [in Christianity] did not make us happy, it would not be believed: how little it must then be worth!

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Hope in reality is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Aphorisms in Beyond Good and Evil
– Disgust with dirt can be so great that it prevents us from cleaning ourselves – from “justifying” ourselves.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
– In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
– It is nobler to declare oneself wrong than to insist on being right – especially when one is right.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist, section 2
– What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power in man, the will to power, power itself. What is bad? All that is born of weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Friedrich Nietzsche – So spake Zarathoustra
– It is time, it is high time… Yes, but to do what?

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Man is more ape than many of the apes.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– How good bad music and bad reasons sound when we march against an enemy.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
– One must still have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his doctrine.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Twilight of the Idols– “Maxims and Arrows”
– THE DISAPPOINTED MAN SPEAKS.–I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the APES of their ideal.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised all the time.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy!

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– When one has much to put into them, a day has a hundred pockets.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 166
– We are always in our own company.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
– In a friend one should have ones best enemy. You should be closest to him with your heart when you resist him.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The higher a man gets, the smaller he seems to those who cannot fly.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil aphorism 78
– Whoever despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– One should never know too precisely whom one has married.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche – “On Reading and Writing”
– There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spake Zarathustra
– That everybody is allowed to learn to read spoileth in the long run not only writing but thinking.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146
– He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– One must have a good memory to be able to keep the promises one makes.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist
– Some men are born posthumously.

Friedrich Nietzsche – “The Will to Power”
– The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil
– What a time experiences as evil, is usually an untimely echo of what was formerly experienced as good–the atavism of a more ancient ideal.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Morality is the greatest of all tools for leading mankind by the nose.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 108
– God is dead.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Thinking evil is making evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the best even of their blunders.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Dawn, Sec. 297
– The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 191
– The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Wisdom sets bounds even to knowledge.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 41
– A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Who is better, they who promote truth over happiness, or happiness over truth?

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– In heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Believe me! The secret of reaping the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment from life is to live dangerously!

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 130
– The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 153
– What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The AntiChrist
– The “highest” states of mind held up before mankind by christianity as of supreme value, are actually forms of convulsive epilepsy.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Faith: not *wanting* to know what is true.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Twilight of the Idols—“Maxims and Arrows”
– I mistrust all systemizers and avoid them. The will to a system is a lack of integrity.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Friedrich Nietzsche – The Gay Science, section 381
– I would not know what the spirit of a philosopher might wish more to be than a good dancer.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Convictions are the more dangerous enemy of truth than lies.

Friedrich Nietzsche – Twilight of the Idols, What I owe to the Ancients
– Plato is boring.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– What else is love but understanding and rejoicing in the fact that another person lives, acts, and experiences otherwise than we do??

Friedrich Nietzsche – Thus Spoke Zarathustra
– Life without music would be a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche –
– Only sick music makes money today.

Machiavelli quotes

Memorable Quotes and quotations from Niccolo Machiavelli

Niccolo Machiavelli Italian dramatist, historian, & philosopher (1469 – 1527)

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– Since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince (1513)
– Nothing feeds upon itself as liberality does.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– To be feared is much safer then to be loved.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– One must be a fox in order to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten off wolves.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– War connot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the others advantage.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the marjority of men live content.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– …people are by nature fickle, and it is easy to persuade them of something, but difficult to keep them persuaded.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– We have not seen great things done in our time except by those who have been considered mean; the rest have failed.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince (1513)
– Hatred may be engendered by good deeds as well as bad ones.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantages of others.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– Is necessary to take such measures that, when they believe no longer, it may be possible to make them believe by force.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– There is no other way of guarding oneself against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect.

Niccolo Machiavelli – quoted in O Magazine, November 2003
– God creates men, but they choose each other.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– …it is a base thing to look to others for your defense instead of depending upon yourself. That defense alone is effectual, sure, and durable which depends upon yourself and your own valor.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

Niccolo Machiavelli – Discourse upon the First Ten Books of Livy
– Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

Niccolo Machiavelli –
– There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, for everyone can see and few can feel. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and it organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince (1532)
– There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.

Niccolo Machiavelli – The Prince
– There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others; the first is the most excellent, the second is good, and the third is useless.