Quotes from Robert Greene

Progress and technology have not rewired us; they have merely altered the forms of our emotions and the type of irrationality that comes with them.

For instance, new forms of media have enhanced the age-old ability of politicians and others to play on our emotions, in ever subtler and more sophisticated ways. Advertisers bombard us with highly effective subliminal messages.

Understand: people will tend to judge you based on your outward appearance. If you are not careful and simply assume that it is best to be yourself, they will begin to ascribe to you all kinds of qualities that have little to do with who you are but correspond to what they want to see.

Pero la fuente primaria de la inteligencia humana es el desarrollo de las neuronas espejo (ver aquí), lo que nos concede la aptitud de ponernos en los zapatos de otro e imaginar su experiencia.

Los individuos con mucho tiempo en sus manos son extremadamente susceptibles a la seducción.

Daily Law: Mastery is a process and discovering your calling is the starting point. Mastery, I: Discover Your Calling—The Life's Task

When the job you are doing is neither above nor below your talents but at your level, you are neither exhausted nor bored and depressed. You suddenly have new energy and creativity.

The bigger it bloats, the harder it falls.

Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay.

A través de una exposición continua a la gente y tratando de pensar dentro de ella podemos obtener una sensación creciente de su perspectiva, pero esto requiere un esfuerzo de nuestra parte.

En Japón hay un dicho popular que reza: "Tada yori takai mono wa nai", que significa: "Nada es más caro que algo que se da gratis". The Unspoken Way, MICHIHIRO MATSUMOTO, 1988

Reconnect with Your Childhood Obsession

But it would be wise to practice instead the opposite, what the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called Mitfreude—"joying with." As he wrote, "The serpent that stings us means to hurt us and rejoices as it does so; the lowest animal can imagine the pain of others. But to imagine the joy of others and to rejoice at it is the highest privilege of the highest animals.

The reason for this is twofold: first, we are quick to discern the mistakes and defects of others, but when it comes to ourselves we are generally too emotional and insecure to look squarely at our own. Second, people rarely tell us the truth about what it is that we do wrong.

Understand this: The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed.

There are very few men—and they are the exceptions—who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment.

The envy elicited by Sir Walter Raleigh is the worst kind: It was inspired by his natural talent and grace, which he felt was best displayed in its full flower.

To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times.

So it is important to judge over time whether a person is rational or irrational. Can they sustain success and hit upon several good strategies? Can they adjust and learn from failures?

Anyone who would spend years absorbing the techniques of their field, trying them out, mastering them, exploring and personalizing them, would inevitebly find their authentic voice and give birth to something unique and expressive

Daily Law: You were obsessed with it as a child for a reason. Reconnect with it. Mastery, I: Discover Your Calling—The Life's Task

You will think in terms of opposites—when people overtly display some trait, such as confidence or hypermasculinity, they are most often concealing the contrary reality.

It is occasionally wiser to imitate the court jester, who plays the fool but knows he is smarter than the king.

Throughout history we witness continual cycles of rising and falling levels of the irrational. The great golden age of Pericles, with its philosophers and its first stirrings of the scientific spirit, was followed by an age of superstition, cults, and intolerance. This same phenomenon happened after the Italian Renaissance. That this cycle is bound to recur again and again is part of human nature.