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Who really said it

Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are

Written by Niccolò Machiavelli 1469–1527 · Florentine diplomat, historian and political theorist
Verified Free to reuse

This one is real, and the wording is traceable to a specific translator. The sentence closes the argument of Chapter XVIII of The Prince — “Concerning the Way in which Princes should keep Faith” — and this exact English is W. K. Marriott’s 1908 translation for Everyman’s Library, confirmed word for word in the Wikisource transcription of Marriott’s Chapter 18 ↗ and in Project Gutenberg’s Marriott edition ↗. Machiavelli’s Italian reads “Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei” — so the thought is his, and the familiar English words are one translator’s choice among several.

Last verified 6 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are” — Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, chapter 18, trans. W. K. Marriott (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1908). Written 1513; first printed 1532. Via Quotle.info · Verbatim: “Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.”

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In context

Evoking the world of Niccolò Machiavelli — Florentine diplomat, historian & political theorist. Theme: "Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Book
The Prince (Il Principe), Chapter XVIII — “Concerning the Way in which Princes should keep Faith”
Written / first printed
Written 1513; first printed 1532, after Machiavelli’s death
Translation
W. K. Marriott, 1908 — Everyman’s Library (J. M. Dent & Sons, London and Toronto; E. P. Dutton, New York)
Original Italian
“Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei”

… There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality, inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result. … Chapter XVIII

W. K. Marriott’s 1908 English. The popular one-line version stops at “what you are” and drops the clause that follows.

Full text of the 1908 translation
The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott, at Project Gutenberg
Read Chapter 18 in Marriott's translation on Wikisource

How we checked

  • We read the sentence in the chapter, not on a quote card. Wikisource’s transcription of Chapter 18 ↗ — proofread against the scanned Everyman’s Library pages — carries “Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are” inside the chapter “Concerning the Way in which Princes should keep Faith.”
  • We confirmed the same wording independently in the full text of Project Gutenberg’s edition of The Prince ↗, whose catalogue record credits the translation to W. K. (William Kenaz) Marriott and gives Machiavelli’s dates as 1469–1527. The edition details come from the scan record: Wikisource’s index page ↗ gives Year 1908 and translator William K. Marriott (1847–1927), and the transcribed title page ↗ reads “PUBLISHED BY J.M. DENT & SONS LTD … IN NEW YORK BY E P DUTTON & CO.”
  • We checked the Italian rather than trusting the English. Italian Wikisource, Il Principe Capitolo XVIII ↗ reads “Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei, e quelli pochi non ardiscono opporsi alla opinione de’ molti.”
  • We tested how much of the English belongs to Marriott. Luigi Ricci’s translation ↗ renders the same clause “Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are” — the sentence is Machiavelli’s, but “really know” is Marriott’s. The line does not appear in any section of Wikiquote’s Machiavelli page ↗, including Disputed and Misattributed, and we found no Quote Investigator article for it.
Public domain

Both layers are clear. Machiavelli’s Italian Il Principe was first printed in 1532 and has been in the public domain for centuries; the English wording quoted here comes from W. K. Marriott’s translation, published in 1908 — well before the 1931 U.S. threshold — so that translation is public domain in the United States too. This applies to the Marriott text specifically: a modern translation of the same sentence would be separately in copyright.

This reflects the original work, which is public domain. If your exact English wording comes from a specific modern translation, that translation may itself still be under copyright — check the edition you quote.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong

Nobody needs to debunk this one — Machiavelli really wrote it. What goes wrong is downstream: the sentence exists in English only through translators, and at least four published renderings circulate as if they were interchangeable — Luigi Ricci’s (1903), W. K. Marriott’s (1908), Thomas G. Bergin’s (1947) and George Bull’s (1961). The version shared most often is Bull’s, and it is the one you cannot read free online, because it is the newest and still in copyright.

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are” A third translator

This is the form that dominates social media, and it is a real translation — George Bull’s, for Penguin Classics, first published in 1961. Bull’s Chapter XVIII runs “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are. And those few dare not gainsay the many who are backed by the majesty of the state,” and an Internet Archive full-text search ↗ finds it inside the Bull editions themselves. What the quote sites drop is the translator: QuoteFancy ↗ gives no bibliographic detail at all, and LibQuotes ↗ cites only “The Prince (1513).” That omission has a consequence: Bull’s English is still in copyright, so reproducing his exact wording is a permissions question in a way that quoting Marriott’s 1908 text is not.

“Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are” A different translator

This one is genuine too — it is Luigi Ricci’s English, readable in Project Gutenberg’s Ricci edition ↗. It stays closer to Machiavelli’s verb sentono, which means to feel or sense rather than to know. Two honest translations, two different famous sentences.

The one-line version Cut short

Machiavelli’s sentence does not stop at “what you are.” It runs on: “and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them” — see the full chapter ↗. The tail is the part that turns an observation into a strategy.

Niccolò Machiavelli Correctly credited

Unusually for a famous-name quotation, the credit itself holds up. The line sits in Chapter XVIII of The Prince in every English edition we checked, and it is absent from the Disputed and Misattributed sections of Wikiquote’s Machiavelli page ↗ — it has never needed rescuing from anyone else.

The idea, the sentence and the chapter are all genuinely Machiavelli’s. The English words you know are W. K. Marriott’s, from 1908 — read them in his Chapter 18 ↗ — so quoting the line accurately means quoting a translator as well as an author.

Context

Why it mattered

Chapter XVIII is where Machiavelli answers the question every reader arrives with: must a prince keep his word? His answer is that a prince must appear to — merciful, faithful, humane, upright and above all religious — because appearance is the only part of him most people will ever get to inspect. The famous sentence is the reason given, and it comes with a second clause that quotation cards almost always drop: the few who do know better “dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many.”

The line is usually shared today as advice about personal branding. In its own paragraph it is closer to an observation about scale. A ruler is known to thousands by sight and to a handful by contact, so reputation and reality come apart as a matter of arithmetic before it is ever a matter of morals — which is exactly why Machiavelli thought the gap could be worked.

“It belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you.”

The Italian, and what ‘sentono’ is doing

Machiavelli’s verb is sentire — to feel, to sense, to perceive — not sapere, to know. The Italian sets seeing against feeling: “Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei.” That is why Luigi Ricci’s English gives “few feel what you are” where Marriott gives “few really know what you are.” Both are defensible readings of the same clause.

So the version of this quote you have met online is simply whichever edition the quote site copied from. Marriott’s and Ricci’s you can check for yourself in a browser tab, because both are long out of copyright and sit in free full-text editions. The wording shared most widely of all — “few experience what you really are” — is George Bull’s 1961 Penguin, which is exactly why no quote site links a full text for it.

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Character Truth Power

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Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

The Prince, Chapter 18 (Marriott translation)en.wikisource.org

Page-by-page transcription of the 1908 Everyman’s Library chapter containing the sentence verbatim.
The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott — full textgutenberg.org

Project Gutenberg’s complete edition; the catalogue record names W. K. Marriott as translator.
Il Principe, Capitolo XVIII (Italian)it.wikisource.org

Machiavelli’s original sentence: “Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei.”
The Prince, trans. Luigi Ricci — full textgutenberg.org

A different English rendering of the same clause: “few feel what you are.”
Index: The Prince (translated by William K. Marriott)en.wikisource.org

The scan record giving the edition year, 1908, and the translator’s dates, 1847–1927.
Niccolò Machiavellien.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced Machiavelli page — this line appears in no Disputed or Misattributed section there.

About the writer

Niccolò Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

1469–1527 · Florentine diplomat, historian & political theorist

Machiavelli spent fourteen years as secretary to the second chancery of the Republic of Florence and to the war-and-diplomacy council, riding to courts across Italy and France and watching power work at close range. He lost the job when the Medici retook Florence in 1512; the following February he was arrested and tortured over a conspiracy he had no part in, released in March under the amnesty that came with the election of the Medici pope Leo X, and pushed out to the countryside — and it was that same year, 1513, that he wrote the short book he first titled De Principatibus. He never saw it printed: Il Principe circulated in manuscript in his lifetime and was not published until 1532, after his death.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. W. K. Marriott, Everyman’s Library (London and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons; New York: E. P. Dutton, 1908), chap. 18, “Concerning the Way in which Princes should keep Faith.” Original: Il Principe, written 1513, first printed 1532. Italian: “Ognuno vede quel che tu pari; pochi sentono quel che tu sei.”

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are’?” Last verified 6 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/every-one-sees-what-you-appear-to-be-few-really-know-what/

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