#machiavelli

When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world. ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#reading #death

Do I look like I watch Star Trek? ↗

— Michael Scott

#machiavelli #star-trek #funny

[...] the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality ↗

— Jacques Barzun

#the-prince #life

[The prince] dare not let ethics keep him from doing whatever evil must be done to preserve himself and the state. ↗

— Jacques Barzun

#the-prince #life

From this arises the following question: whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse. The answer is that one would like to be both the one and the other, but because they are difficult to combine, it is far better to be loved than feared if you cannot be both. ↗

— Niccolò Machiavelli

#love #machiavelli #love

Stupidity trumps Machiavelli almost every time when you are looking for an explanation. ↗

— Robert Foster Bennett

#every #every time #explanation #looking #machiavelli

Master the rules of the game until you can play it better they can. ↗

— Michael Scott

#lesson #life #michael-scott #niccolo-machiavelli #the-sorceress

The political tradition of ancient thought, filtered in Italy by Machiavelli, says one thing clearly: every prince needs allies, and the bigger the responsibility, the more allies he needs. ↗

— Silvio Berlusconi

#ancient #bigger #clearly #every #filtered

What this White House really needs is a chief of staff who can read Machiavelli in the original Italian. ↗

— Mack McLarty

#house #italian #machiavelli #needs #original

Machiavelli's teaching would hardly have stood the test of Parliamentary government, for public discussion demands at least the profession of good faith. ↗

— Lord Acton

#discussion #faith #good #good faith #government