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.

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

It is necessary for him who lays out a state and arranges laws for it to presuppose that all men are evil and that they are always going to act according to the wickedness of their spirits whenever they have free scope.