The Prince

you wish to please me, and to bring success and honour to yourself, do right and study, because others will help you if you help yourself."

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined

Men will not look at things as they really are, but as they wish them to be—and are ruined

For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of adversaries who have the laws on their side, and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event.

other and bet­ter course is to send colon­ies to one or two places, which may be as keys to that state, for it is ne­ces­sary either to do this or else to keep there a great num­ber of cav­alry and in­fantry. A prince does not spend much on colon­ies, for with little or no ex­pense he can send them out and keep them there, and he of­fends a minor­ity only of the cit­izens from whom he takes lands and houses to give them to the new in­hab­it­ants; and those whom he of­fends, re­main­ing poor and scattered, are never able to in­jure him; whilst the rest be­ing un­injured are eas­ily kept quiet, and at the same time are anxious not to err for fear it should hap­pen to them as it has to those who have been de­spoiled

Be­cause, if one is on the spot, dis­orders are seen as they spring up, and one can quickly rem­edy them; but if one is not at hand, they are heard of only when they are great, and then one can no longer rem­edy them.

who has an­nexed them, if he wishes to hold them, has only to bear in mind two con­sid­er­a­tions: the one, that the fam­ily of their former lord is ex­tin­guished; the other, that neither their laws nor their taxes are altered, so that in a very short time they will be­come en­tirely one body with the old prin­cip­al­ity.

n, can only be cor­rup­ted with great dif­fi­culty, and one can ex­pect little ad­vant­age from them when they have been cor­rup­ted,

is the bold rather than the cau­tious man that will win and hold them both.

And again, he need not make him­self un­easy at in­cur­ring a re­proach for those vices without which the state can only be saved with dif­fi­culty, for if everything is con­sidered care­fully, it will be found that some­thing which looks like vir­tue, if fol­lowed, would be his ruin; whilst some­thing else, which looks like vice, yet fol­lowed brings him se­cur­ity and prosper­ity.