There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the induction of a new order of things.
Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.
- Topic: Judgment, Perception
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Niccolo Machiavelli
From this arises the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both: but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved.
The first method of estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
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To live is in itself a value judgment. To breathe is to judge.
Do not peer too far.
You shall judge of a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place the come down and shoot the survivors.
Nobody likes the man who brings bad news.
Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.
You write in order to change the world…the world changes according to the way people see it, and if you alter, even but a millimetre the way people look at reality, then you change it.
The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and . . . each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.
Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.
The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
Death is no more than passing from one room into another. But there's a difference for me, you know. Because in that other room I shall be able to see.
Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.
The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.
If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other persons point of view and see things from his angle as well as your own.
