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. Florentine statesman, diplomat, and political theorist (1469–1527)
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.
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.
Ambition is so powerful a passion in the human breast, that however high we reach we are never satisfied.
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.