Quotes from Robert Greene

Your first impulse should always be to find the evidence that disconfirms your most cherished beliefs and those of others. That is true science.

Recuerda mantener distancia emocional y física. Esto te permitirá llorar y reír a voluntad, y proyectar autosuficiencia; y con tal desapego, podrás jugar con las emociones de la gente como si tocaras un piano.

Si tienes una cara dulce y un aire inocente, emite indicios de algo oscuro, e incluso vagamente cruel, en tu carácter.

Sigue la ciega Fortuna / a la audacia ciega y loca, / y muchas veces los cuerdos / lo son haciendo las cosas / sin dar tiempo a la cordura / de examinarlas juiciosa.

About the only thing that constant human contact cannot facilitate is thought. The weight of society's pressure to conform, and the lack of distance from other people, can make it impossible to think clearly about what is going on around you.

The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.

A warning: Unpredictability can work against you sometimes, especially if you are in a subordinate position. There are times when it is better to let people feel comfortable and settled around you than to disturb them. Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even of some more serious psychic problem. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously.

See Beyond the Moment

We see the results—our thoughts, moods, and actions—but have little conscious access to what actually moves our emotions and compels us to behave in certain ways.

Excuses satisfy no one and apologies make everyone uncomfortable. The mistake does not vanish with an apology; it deepens and festers. Better to cut it off instantly, distract attention from yourself, and focus attention on a convenient scapegoat before people have time to ponder your responsibility or your possible incompetence.

My policy is to have no policy. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809–1865

The answer is to reverse this perspective: Stop fixating on what other people are saying and doing. Stop fixating on the money, the connections, the outward appearance of things. Instead look inward, focus on the smaller internal changes that lay the groundwork for a much larger change in fortune. It is the difference between grasping at an illusion and immersing yourself in reality. And reality is what will liberate and transform you.

Debes creer en algo, y con tal firmeza que anime todos tus gestos y encienda tu mirada. Un prerrequisito de la creencia ardiente es una gran causa que junte a las personas, una cruzada.

By yielding, you in fact control the situation, because your surrender is part of a larger plan to lull them into believing they have defeated you. This is the essence of the surrender tactic: Inwardly you stay firm, but outwardly you bend. Deprived of a reason to get angry, your opponents will often be bewildered instead.

The recreation of yourself in the eyes of others is a powerful process that must not be left to chance.

Daily Law: What would you work on if no one was looking? If money were no object? TED Talk, "The Key to Transforming Yourself," October 23, 2013

Men of great abilities are slow to act. for it is easier to avoid occasions for committing yourself than to come well out of a commitment. Such occasions test your judgment; it is safer to avoid them than to emerge victorious from them. One obligation leads to a greater one, and you come very near to the brink of disaster. BALTASAR GRACIÁN, 1601-1658

Create Mental Space from the Group

People do not want truth and honesty, no matter how much we hear such nonsense endlessly repeated. They want their imaginations to be stimulated and to be taken beyond their banal circumstances. They want fantasy and objects of desire to covet and grope after.

He who asks fortune-tellers the future unwittingly forfeits an inner intimation of coming events that is a thousand times more exact than anything they may say. WALTER BENJAMIN, 1892-1940

What makes us go astray in the first place is that we are unattuned to the present moment, insensitive to the circumstances. We are listening to our own thoughts, reacting to things that happened in the past, applying theories and ideas that we digested long ago but that have nothing to do with our predicament in the present. More books, theories, and thinking only make the problem worse.

Una superficie brillante puede tener encanto decorativo, pero lo que te hace voltear a ver un cuadro es la profundidad de campo, una ambigüedad inexpresable, una complejidad surreal.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by everything that faces you in battle, where so many people are asking or telling you what to do.

My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be other than it is, not in the future, not in the past, not in all eternity. Not merely to endure that which happens of necessity . . . but to love it. — FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE