"Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself."
― Niccolo Machiavelli
Topic(s):
Great
More From Niccolo Machiavelli
- "A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example."
- "Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds."
- "It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope."
More In Great
- "It’s rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it’s Hemingway, Van Gogh… Robert Schumann has been mentioned… Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath… some of them with rather grim ends."― Stephen Fry
- "I think that Obama is very cool. And I think he’s clever, and I think he can be witty. But I don’t think he’s funny in either the way that Reagan was funny – or John McCain and Dick Cheney are both funny in that ruthless, kind of mean way."― Mo Rocca
- "It is better wither to be silent, or to say things of more value than silence. Sooner throw a pearl at hazard than an idle or useless word; and do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in a few."― Pythagoras