Political Philosophy of Machiavelli: Aphorisms from Art of War

• A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.
• Since the handling of arms is a beautiful spectacle, it is delightful to young men.
• Knowing how to fight made men more bold, because no one fears doing what it seems to him he has learned to do. Therefore, the ancients wanted their citizens to be trained in every warlike action.
• When they remain in garrison, soldiers are maintained with fear and punishment; when they are then led to war, with hope and reward.
• Without doubt, ferocious and disordered men are much weaker than timid and ordered ones. For order chases fear from men and disorder lessens ferocity.
• Never lead your soldiers to battle if you have not first confirmed their spirit and known them to be without fear and ordered; and never test them except when you see that they hope to win.
• Every little advantage is of great moment when men have to come to blows.
• To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.
• In the armies, and among every ten men, there must be one of more life, of more heart, or at least of more authority, who with his spirit, with his words, and with his example keeps the others firm and disposed to fight.
• In war, discipline can do more than fury.
• Sometimes it has been of great moment while the fight is going on, to disseminate words that pronounce the enemies' captain to be dead, or to have been conquered by another part of the army. Many times this has given victory to him who used it.
• It is much better to tempt fortune where it can favor you than to see your certain ruin by not tempting it.
• There is nothing as likely to succeed as what the enemy believes you cannot attempt.
• The greatest remedy that is used against a plan of the enemy is to do voluntarily what he plans that you do by force.
• You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.
• The forces of adversaries are more diminished by the loss of those who flee than of those who are killed.
• And above all you ought to guard against leading an army to fight which is afraid or which is not confident of victory. For the greatest sign of an impending loss is when one does not believe one can win.
• Necessities can be many, but the one that is stronger is that which constrains you to win or to die.
• Present wars impoverish the lords that win as much as those that lose.
• War makes thieves, and peace hangs them.