The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment.

Johann von Goethe, 1749-1832

The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. But stratagems devised by a wise man can kill even babes in the womb.

Kautilya, Third Century BC

I thought to myself what means, with what deceptions, with how many varied arts, with what industry a man sharpens his wits to deceive another, and through these variations the world is made more beautiful.

Francesco Vettori, Sixteenth Century

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab, each other, if manners did not interpose.

Lord Chesterfield, 1694-1773

There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, "These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?" there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, "We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad; there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than a nation.

Honore De Balzac, 1799-1850

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence, a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527

Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us, they maybe related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company.

Baltasar Gracian, 1601-1658

To have a good enemy, choose a friend, he knows where to strike.

Diane De Poitiers, 1499-1566

Thus for my own part I have been deceived by the person I loved most and of whose love, above everyone else's, I have been most confident, so that I believe that it maybe right to love and serve one person above all others, according to merit and worth, but never to trust so much in this tempting trap of friendship as to have cause to repent of it later on.

Baldassare Castiglione, 1478-1529