Non è mai alcuna cosa sì disperata, che non
vi sia qualche via da poterne sperare.
No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope.
Niccolò Machiavelli, from The Mandrake (A.D. 1524), Act I, scene 1
There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man.
Polybius, The Histories, Book XVIII, Chapter 43.
Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis nominibus imperium,
atque, ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire, and where they make a desert, they call it peace.
Publius Tacitus, De vita et moribus Iulii Agricolae (A.D. 98), Chapter 30, conclusion.
Comincionsi le guerre quando altri vuole,
ma non quando altri vuole si finiscono
Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
Niccolò Machiavelli, from the Florentine Histories — Istorie fiorentine (A.D. 1526).
The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Polybius, as in The Histories of Polybius, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1889), Book I, Chapter 1.
It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying ‘I want to kill you with them,’ because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire.
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy (A.D. 1517), Book 1, Ch 44 (as translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella).
Apparently, “conspiracy stuff” is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.
Gore Vidal, “The Enemy Within,” The Observer (October 27, 2002).
It’s a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.
Christopher Morley, The Haunted Bookshop (1919).
What if a person is sure of his identity but it isn’t his identity?
Science fiction author James Tiptree, Jr. — the pseudonym of Alice Sheldon — in the short story “Beam Us Home,” Ten Thousand Light-Years from Home (1973), p. 305.
The moral of this story is, anything you don’t understand is dangerous until you do understand it.
Science fiction author Larry Niven, “Flatlander” in Neutron Star (1968).