Niccoló Machiavelli

'Tis not money (as the common opinion will have it) but good soldiers that is the sinews of war: for money cannot find good soldiers, but good soldiers will be free to find money...

• The Machiavellians (James Burnham)
  • p. 42 (Lume Books, 1943)
• Discourses on Livy

There are no dreams or ghosts in Machiavelli. He lives and writes in the daylight world.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 30 (Lume Books, 1943)

Machiavelli divorced politics from ethics only in the same sense that science must divorce itself from ethics.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 35 (Lume Books, 1943)

Political life, according to Machiavelli, is never static, but in continual change. There is no way of avoiding this change. Any idea of a perfect state, or even of a reasonably good state, much short of perfection, that could last indefinitely, is an illusion.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 56 (Lume Books, 1943)

The mere fact that the knowledge made explicit by Machiavelli has been put to bad uses, which is a potential fate of all knowledge, cannot explain why he is singled out for infamy.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 69 (Lume Books, 1943)

The harsh opinion of Machiavelli has been more widespread in England and the United States than in the nations of Continental Europe. This is no doubt natural, because the distinguishing quality of Anglo-Saxon politics has always been hypocrisy, and hypocrisy must always be at pains to shy away from the truth.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 69 (Lume Books, 1943)

Whatever may be the desires of most men, it is most certainly against the interests of the powerful that the truth should be known about political behavior... If men generally understood as much of the mechanism of rule and privilege as Machiavelli understood, they would no longer be deceived into accepting that rule and privilege, and they would know what steps to take to overcome them.

• The Machiavellians
  • pp. 69-70 (Lume Books, 1943)

Small wonder that the powerful—in public—denounce Machiavelli. The powerful have long practice and much skill in sizing up their opponents. They can recognize an enemy who will never compromise, even when that enemy is so abstract as a body of ideas.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 70 (Lume Books, 1943)

Machiavellianism is concerned with politics, that is, with the struggle for power.

• The Machiavellians
  • p. 74 (Lume Books, 1943)