Machiavellian Quotes & Sayings

From a selection of his other works, we might think him variously courtly, cerebral, metaphysical, melancholic, Machiavellian, neurotic, lighthearted, loving, and much more. Shakespeare was of course all these things - as a writer. We hardly know what he was as a person. — Bill Bryson

These eight independent satellite states of the psychopathic personality
Machiavellian Egocentricity, Impulsive Nonconformity, Blame Externalization, Carefree Nonplanfulness, Fearlessness, Social Potency, Stress Immunity, and Coldheartedness. — Kevin Dutton

Be blessed with an honest character, true heart.
Wise, dignified people who value honesty stir away from dishonest, corrupt schemers.
Great reward is not on titles, position, appearances, status or richness but the peace of one's heart and service to humanity.
Peace of one's heart can mean far and away and not falling into any Machiavellian trap. — Angelica Hopes

If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble. — Cornel West

As the map of the Great Plain was being redrawn by a young Shazarian councillor, the ageing Shylonian king interrupted mid-speech to ask him his name. With a piercing glare and a haughty flick of his cloak, he retorted 'Lord Ratilla, Shazarian Imperial Secretary, and who might you be?' Behind the gasps of horror, the message was clear. It was Shazaria who now bestrode the Amaran world, henceforth the office of Shazarian minister now held greater prestige than even that of foreign monarchs. What became even clearer were the depths of Shazarian treachery. The impudent youth who stood before the kings of Amara stripping them of ancient provinces, was the same adolescent reputed to have delivered an eloquent speech which swayed the Shazarian councillors in favour of war.
Had this been their intention all along? — A.H. Septimius

Most people are just too self-absorbed, well-meaning, and lazy to bother orchestrating Machiavellian plans to slight or insult us. It's more often a boring, complicated story of wrong assumptions, miscommunication, bad administration, and cover-ups - people trying, and mostly failing, to do the right thing, hurting each other not because that's their intention but because it's impossible to avoid. — Tim Kreider

Why could you not have left me as I was, in the sea of being?"
"Because the world has need of your humility, your piety, your great teaching and your Machiavellian scheming. — Roger Zelazny

If she replaces her eyebrows with a Machiavellian triangle, paints her fingernails blue, and dyes her hair some color you'd see in a comic book it's not too attractive to me-because it's too familiar. Extremes aren't necessary. Even 'high fashion' frightens most men. When I have to wait in the dentist's office, I sometimes look at fashion magazines. To me, most of the models look like they have rickets or scoliosis of the spine. They look less like woman than caricatures. — Robert Stack

Danny: You can be as morally righteous as you want - in a vacuum - but throw in a second entity and you gotta start acting in response to the other. — Angry Zodd

I'm not quite Machiavellian enough to set him up, but if he strays too close to the edge I might give him a nudge. — Joe Haldeman

I've been fascinated by Machiavelli since I was very young. I've always felt that he had a bad rap from history, and that he was actually a person quite unlike what we now think of as Machiavellian. He was a republican. He disliked totalitarian government. — Salman Rushdie

We're living in a Machiavellian world, whether we like it or we don't. — Bob Dylan

Henry's a perfectionist, I mean, really-really kind of inhuman - very brilliant, very erratic and enigmatic. He's a stiff, cold person, Machiavellian, ascetic and he's made himself what he is by sheer strength of will. His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that's why he's attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks - all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection. — Donna Tartt

The real Machiavellian genius of the First Amendment is that free speech turns out to be mostly harmless - a lot of P.C. nit-picking, dingbat conspiracy theories, tedious libertarian screeds and name calling. The only "free speech" that has any effect in a stable, well-run plutocracy is the kind protected by Buckley vs. Valeo in the form of campaign contributions. — Tim Kreider

How soon could you be ready to go?"
She tilted her head, and her smile turned into a grin. "Is fifteen minutes soon enough?"
"Really. Fifteen minutes." His gold eyes narrowed suddenly. "Those books. That conversation. You little Machiavellian, you set me up. — Thea Harrison

I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations. — J.J. Abrams

But when you disarm them, you at once offend them by showing that you distrust them, either for cowardice or for want of loyalty, and either of these opinions breeds hatred against you. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Without an opportunity, their abilities would have been wasted, and without their abilities, the opportunity would have arisen in vain. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It is a common fault of men not to reckon on storms in fair weather. — Niccolo Machiavelli

When the sun sets on the American empire, as it will, as it must, Noam Chomsky's work will survive. It will point a cool incriminating finger at a merciless Machiavellian empire as cruel, self-righteous and hypocritical as the ones it has replaced. (The only difference is that it is armed with technology that can visit the kind of devastation on the world that history has never known and the human race cannot begin to imagine.) — Arundhati Roy

When I heard of the shady tactics of the Moonies, my initial indignation was modified by empathy. I remembered only too well all the innocuous-sounding "fronts" operated by Evangelicals in order to witness to sinners, e.g., coffee houses, concerts, philosophical forums, religious surveys. None of these was ever billed for what it was. The idea was to hook the unsuspecting sinner and win an opportunity to tell him the gospel. Similar Machiavellian tactics govern various interpersonal contacts. A campus leader or foreign student may find himself the object of an Evangelical's friendly attention, not realizing he has been singled out for "friendship evangelism" because of his potentially strategic position. — Robert M. Price

He [Merlin] is slightly from another world and place, so it's about having fun and presenting it in a new way. He's more of a politician, and slightly Machiavellian, but there's also a lovely relationship going on between Merlin and Arthur. There's so much to be had, really. — Joseph Fiennes

I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat. — Joseph Fiennes

I hope I can never trust my wife. If I trust her it means I know her. If I know her it means I understand her. If I understand her it means I can control her, and if I can control her it would make her boring and uninteresting ... Dear god I hope I can never trust my wife ... — Ben Mitchell

More often than not, I get cast as quite Machiavellian roles - it's something about my face; I'm quite shifty or something! — Natalie Dormer

Why didn't the Democrats accomplish more right after the 2006 elections that gave them control of Congress? It wasn't just that they didn't have votes to override a presidential veto or block a filibuster. They didn't use their mandate to substantially change how the public--and the media-- thought about issues. They just tried to be rational, to devise programs to fit people's interests and the polls. Because there was little understanding of the brain, there was no campaign to change brains. Indeed, the very idea of "changing brains" sounds a little sinister to progressives-- a kind of Frankenstein image comes to mind. It sounds Machiavellian to liberals, like what the Republicans do. But "changing minds" in any deep way always requires changing brains. Once you understand a bit more about how brains work, you will understand that politics is very much about changing brains-- and that it can be highly moral and not the least bit sinister or underhanded. — George Lakoff

Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and gives the whole show away. The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden. — Maurice Merleau Ponty

When I wrote 'The West Wing,' the juice behind it was that in popular culture, our leaders in government are generally portrayed as Machiavellian, or as idiots. I thought, well, how about writing about a group of hyper-competent people? — Aaron Sorkin

People who wrote novels about universities hardly ever got them right. Max had spent his short working life untenured, but still he'd managed to be a charming magnet wherever he taught, and Amy had surfeited on faculty gossip and professorial antics and the general behavior of academics, who were as a whole no more brilliant or Machiavellian than travel agents. They tended toward shabbier clothes and manners, and of course there was the occasional storied eccentric or truly original mind, but most college campuses - especially the older ones - functioned less as brain trusts than as wildlife preserves, housing and protecting people who wouldn't last a week in GenPop. — Jincy Willett

I did not have an answer for the maestro that day. Instead my answer has been the labor of my life, principally my Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy but also my little Prince. Despite what so many say, I did not embark upon this voyage to show men how evil can triumph, but to demonstrate that evil surely will triumph if good men do not strive to learn well its lessons. And now that my usefulness, if not my life itself, has ended, I can say before God and man that I have met the challenge of the great maestro of revered memory issued on the road to Cesenatico. For in my life's work, I crossed the unknown sea and charted a route for all men to follow, should they wish to live in peace and security. — Michael Ennis

Merlin is really at the forefront, in that regard. We get a glimpse into the dark, Machiavellian corridors of power. I like the fact that, although he has powers, his powers are almost in his political guile as much as what he relies on, in darker forces. — Joseph Fiennes

Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate.Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the "Principe," has determined the development of European history ever since. — Stefan Zweig

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close to possessing. — Donald J. Boudreaux

Then I started thinking about tears. What was evolution up to when it rendered the human body incapable of concealing sadness? Is it somehow crucial to the survival of the species that we can't hide our melancholy? Why? What's the evolutionary benefit of crying? To elicit sympathy? Does evolution have a Machiavellian streak? — Steve Toltz

I am a Christian according to my conscience in belief,in purpose and wish;Mnot of course by the orthodox standard. But I am content, and have a feeling of trust and safety.
The Machiavellian mind and the merchant mind are at one in their simple faith in the power of segmental division to rule all
in the dichotomy of power and morals and of money and morals. — Marshall McLuhan

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook, never takes its sophistries seriously, but only its practical aims, which are concealed beneath these sophistries. Political rhetoric and sophistries do not exist, after all, in order that they be believed; rather, they have to serve as a common and agreed upon alibi. Foolish people who take them in earnest sooner or later discover inconsistencies in them, begin to protest, and finish finally and infamously as heretics and apostates. No, too much faith never brings anything good ... — Milan Kundera

People expect Byzantine, Machiavellian logic from politicians. But the truth is simple. Trial lawyers learn a good rule: 'Don't decide what you don't have to decide.' That's not evasion, it's wisdom. — Mario Cuomo

I stared at Jean-Claude and it wasn't the beauty of him that made me love him, it was just him. It was love made up of a thousand touches, a million conversations, a trillion shared looks. A love made up of danger shared, enemies conquered, a determination to neither of us would change the other, even if we could. I love Jean-Claude, all of him, because if I took away the Machiavellian plottings, the labyrinth of his mind, it would lessen him, make him someone else. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The actual assertion that the Census Bureau could behave in such a way as to tilt things one way or the other way in the partisan sense, is, on the face of it, a silly charge. It's the same Census Bureau that's considered to be incompetent by some people, and then some of the same people are saying that this incompetent agency is so clever and so Machiavellian that it can design a census for partisan reasons. — Kenneth Prewitt

Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
You're the Doctor of my dreams
With your crinkly hair and your glassy stare
And your Machiavellian schemes
I know they say that you are very vain
And short and fat and pushy
But at least you're not insane
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
And wishing you were here

Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
You're so chubby and so neat
With your funny clothes and your squishy nose
You're like a German parakeet
All right so people say that you don't care
But you've got nicer legs than Hitler
And bigger tits than Cher
Henry Kissinger
How I'm missing yer
And wishing you were here — Graham Chapman

We have been forced to watch, powerless, the rebels' brilliant tactic of helping our voters to move all their useless junk back into their apartments, that, gentlemen, could only be the brainchild of some machiavellian mastermind, — Jose Saramago

Raw, glittering force, however, compounded of the cruel Machiavellianism of nature, if it is to be but Machiavellian, seems to exercise a profound attraction for the conventionally rooted. Your cautious citizen of average means, looking out through the eye of his dull world of seeming fact, is often the first to forgive or condone the grim butcheries of theory by which the strong rise. — Theodore Dreiser

I no longer believed that Valentino would continue to build anything at all. Instead, he would merely leave behind the empire of hope that he had constructed in each of our minds. Leonardo's empire boasted cities more perfect than Plato or Augustine could have imagined. My empire of hope was an Italy defended by citizen soldiers rather than mercenary thugs, free of tyranny and foreign armies, with justice for all regardless of rank or wealth. But I feared I had come to Cesenatico only to wander among its ruins. — Michael Ennis

Bloody Machiavellian English Intelligence Officer playing God — Elizabeth Wein

Cruelty, whether physical or emotional, isn't normal. It may signal what psychologists call the dark triad of psychopathic, narcissistic and Machiavellian personality disorders. One out of about every 25 individuals has an antisocial personality disorder. Their prognosis for recovery is zero, their potential for hurting you about 100 percent. So don't assume that a vicious person just had a difficult childhood or a terrible day; most people with awful childhoods end up being empathetic, and most people, even on their worst days, don't seek satisfaction by inflicting pain. When you witness evil, if only the tawdry evil of a conversational stiletto twist, use your ninjutsu, wait for a distraction, then disappear. — Martha N. Beck