The main foundations of every state, new states as well as ancient or composite ones, are good laws and good arms you cannot have good laws without good arms, and where there are good arms, good laws inevitably follow. – Niccolo Machiavelli
Whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself. – Niccolo Machiavelli
War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans. – Niccolo Machiavelli
Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance, but if you injure them greatly they are unable to retaliate, so that the injury done to a man ought to be such that vengeance cannot be feared. – Niccolo Machiavelli
Ive always believed in God. I also think thats the sort of thing that either comes as part of the equipment, the capacity to believe, or at some point in your life, when youre in a position where you actually need help from a power greater than yourself, you simply make an agreement. – Stephen King