"Men are so simple of mind, and..." - Quote by Niccolo Machiavelli
Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.
More by Niccolo Machiavelli
“For this is the tragedy of man circumstances change, but he does not.”
“it is much safer to be feared than loved because ...love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
“The princes who have done great things are the ones who have taken little account of their promises.”
More on Human Nature
“No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
“We kind of shape our truths as we speak them. We fashion things to suit the occasion or the person or our own needs in the moment.”
“It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has set like plaster, and will never soften again.”
More on Deception
“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”
“War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.”
“It is very often nothing but our own vanity that deceives us. Women fancy admiration means more than it does. And men take care that they should.”