Quotes from Robert Greene

But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs' clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then—never offend or deceive the wrong person.

The tragedy of Nixon was that he had immense political talent and intelligence; if only he had also possessed the ability to look within and measure the darker sides to his character. It is the tragedy that confronts us all to the extent that we remain in deep denial.

A raiva é a reação emocional mais destrutiva, pois é a que mais turva sua visão. Também tem um efeito cascata que invariavelmente torna as situações menos controláveis e acentua a decisão do seu inimigo. Se você está tentando destruir um inimigo que o magoou, é bem melhor desarmá-lo fingindo amizade do que mostrando que está com raiva.

Authority: The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours. (Jean de La Bruyère, 1645-1696)

Those who are truly original and different do not need to make a great show of it.

Daily Law: The fact that you are aware of this insignificance and smallness is paradoxically what renders you powerful and significant. It is an understanding of reality that no other animal is capable of. Such awareness can begin to restore to you that sense of awe and connection that comes from a proper sense of scale.

The truth, however, is very different from this. Certainly there are individuals and larger forces out there that continually have an effect on us, and there is much we cannot control in the world. But generally what causes us to go astray in the first place, what leads to bad decisions and miscalculations, is our deep-rooted irrationality, the extent to which our minds are governed by emotion.

Es mejor ser agredido o difamado que ignorado.

Todo lo que es gratuito es peligroso, ya que por lo general implica alguna treta o un compromiso oculto. Las cosas que tienen costo valen la pena pagarse. De esta manera, no estará obligado a gratitud alguna, se verá libre de culpa y evitará fraudes y engaños. Lo más inteligente es, a menudo, pagar el precio total. Cuando hablamos de excelencia no hay gangas. Sea generoso con su dinero y hágalo circular, dado que la generosidad es señal e imán de poder.

Going deeper into their Otherness, feeling what they feel, we can discover what makes them different and learn about human nature.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. —Carl Jung

Pense nos idiotas da mesma forma que em crianças ou animais domésticos - não são suficientemente importantes para afectar o sue equilíbrio mental.

They come to accept things that are made cheaply and quickly. The idea that they might have to expend much effort to get what they want has been eroded by the proliferation of devices that do so much of the work for them, fostering the idea that they deserve all of this—that it is their inherent right to have and to consume what they want.

Do not overstep your bounds. Do what you are assigned to do, to the best of your abilities, and never do more. To think that by doing more you are doing better is a common blunder. It is never good to seem to be trying too hard—it is as if you were covering up some deficiency. Fulfilling a task that has not been asked of you just makes people suspicious. If you are a crown-keeper, be a crown-keeper. Save your excess energy for when you are not in the court.

The real purpose of the backward-glancing eye is to educate yourself constantly—you look at the past to learn from those who came before you.

The recurrence of this mirrors the recurrence in our own lives of the same problems and mistakes, forming negative patterns. It is hard to learn from experience

The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery. There is no possible reversal to this process.

Creating this feeling of validation is the golden key that will unlock people's defenses. And we cannot survive and thrive in this highly competitive world without possessing such a power. We must discover the power that we can possess by giving people the validation they crave and lowering their defenses. And the key to making this happen in a realistic and strategic manner is to fully understand a fundamental law of human nature.

be aware of these illusions and façades and to train ourselves to look through them. We must scrutinize everybody for signs of their character, no matter the appearance they present or the position they occupy.

em mim, e manter sob controle rigoroso

You must never disdain an apprenticeship with no pay. In fact, it is often the height of wisdom to find the perfect mentor and offer your services as an assistant for free.

Your task is to let go of the rigidity that takes hold of you as you overidentify with the expected gender role. Power lies in exploring that middle range between the masculine and the feminine, in playing against people's expectations.

human tongue is a beast that few can master.