Quotes from Robert Greene

This means that you move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you, where you will get the most objective feedback on your performance and progress. You do not choose apprenticeships that seem easy and comfortable.

People's need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important, is the best kind of weakness to exploit. First, it is almost universal; second, exploiting it is so very easy. All you have to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence.

Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target.

The gods of power frown on the frivolous; they give ultimate satisfaction only to those who study and reflect, and punish those who skim the surfaces looking for a good time.

What you want in warfare is room to maneuver. Tight corners spell death. Having enemies gives you options. You can play them off against each other, make one a friend as a way of attacking the other, on and on.

talking endlessly about [ourselves] is eminently anti-seductive, revealing not self-sufficiency but insecurity.

So I'd gotten rid of that negativity and I'd show, "Well, here's something done right. Here's the mistake, but here's how to fix the mistake.

Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal. What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people's style, or personal rantings that do not really express anything.

The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.

The more you are in contact with others, the more graceful and at ease you become. Isolation, on the other hand, engenders an awkwardness in your gestures, and leads to further isolation, as people start avoiding you.

Never neglect the way you arrange things visually. Factors like color, for example, have enormous symbolic resonance.

50 Cent is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.

One of the most potent weapons in the battle for information, then, is giving out false information. As Winston Churchill said, "Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

Powerful people never waste time. Outwardly they may play along with the game — pretending that power is shared among many — but inwardly they keep their eyes on the inevitable few in the group who hold the cards. These are the ones they work on. When troubles arise, they look for the underlying cause, the single strong character who started the stirring and whose isolation or banishment will settle the waters again.

Making a show of one's weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power.

Power is a game. This cannot be repeated too often!

Remember: Stirrers thrive by hiding in the group, disguising their actions among the reactions of others. Render their actions visible and they lose their power to upset.

But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.

El poder es, en esencia, amoral. Una de las habilidades más importantes que deberá adquirir es la capacidad de aprender a ver circunstancias, en lugar de, simplemente, el bien o el mal.

We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality.

Once envy eats away at someone, everything you do only makes it grow, and day by day it festers inside him. Eventually he will attack.

the powerful are often reluctant to take advice

The problem is, when things go verbal, you drop out the detail.

Play the psychoanalyst: make cutting comments concerning their unconscious motives (you are only being truthful), then sit back and listen. Your silence will goad them into embarrassing admissions. Leaven your judgments with occasional praise and they will strive to please you, like dogs.