Niccolo Machiavelli Ambition Quotations

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.

And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways.

Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not to suffer.

It is a true observation of ancient writers, that as men are apt to be cast down by adversity, so they, are easily satiated with prosperity, and that joy and grief produce the same effects. For whenever men are not obliged by necessity to fight they fight from ambition, which is so powerful a passion in the human breast that however high we reach we are never satisfied.

He who blinded by ambition, raises himself to a position whence he cannot mount higher, must thereafter fall with the greatest loss.