48 laws of power - Robert Greene
Personal notes on the book 48 laws of power.
- Never outshine the master
- Never put too much trust in friends and learn how to use enemies
- Conceal your intentions
- Always say less than necessary
- Guard your reputation with your life
- Court attention at all costs
- Get others to do the work for you but always take the credit
- Make other people come to you and use bait if necessary
- Win through your actions never through argument
- Avoid the unhappy and unlucky
- Learn to keep people dependent on you
- Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim
- When asking for help, appeal to peoples self interest never to their mercy or gratitude
- Pose as a friend and work as a spy
- Crush your enemy totally
- Use absence to increase respect and honor
- Cultivate an air of unpredictability
- Do not build fortresses to protect yourself
- Do not offend the wrong person
- Do not commit to anyone
- Seem dumber than your mark
- Transform weakness into power
- Concentrate your forces
- Play the perfect courier
- Recreate yourself
- Keep your hands clean
- Play on people's need to believe to create a cultlike following
- Enter action with boldness
- Plan all the way to the end
- Make your accomplishments seem effortless
- Get others to play with the cards you deal
- Play to peoples fantasies
- Discover each mans thumbscrew
- Act like a king to be treated like one
- Master the art of timing
- Ignore things you cannot have
- Create compelling spectacles
- Think as you like but behave like others
- Stir up waters to catch fish
- Despise the free lunch
- Avoid stepping into a great mans shoes
- Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter
- Work on the hearts and minds of others
- Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect
- Preach the need for change but never reform too much at once
- Never appear too perfect
- In victory learn when to stop
- Assume formlessness
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite - inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
Be wary of friends - they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily arounsed to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. 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.
Lincoln said that you destroy an enemy when you make a friend of him.
Mao's strategy: never pick a fight with someone you are not sure you can defeat. If you have no apparent enemies, you must sometimes set up a convenient target, even turning a friend into an enemy. Use such enemies to define your cause more clearly to the public, even framing it as a struggle of good against evil.
When deceiving people, keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them for enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intention, it will be too late.
When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
When you carefully control what you reveal, people cannot pierce your intentions or your meaning.
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
If you have no reputation and want to destroy another person's, sow doubts. If the opponent denies the rumours, a layer of suspicion still remains: why are they defending themselves so desperately? Maybe the rumour has some truth to it. And if they ignore you, the doubts, unrefuted, grow stronger. If done correctly, the sowing of rumours can infuriate and unsettle your rival that in defending themselves they can make mistakes.
Once you have a solid base of respect, ridiculing your opponent both puts him on the defensive and draws more attention to you, enhancing your own reputation.
When you are first establishing your reputation, protect it strictly, anticipating all attacks on it. Once it is solid, do not let yourself get angry or defensive at the slanderous comments of your enemies. Never appear desperate in your self-defense.
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all costs. Make yourself a magnet for attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.
- Part 1. Surround your name with the sensational and scandalous
- Part 2. Create an air of mystery
If you find yourself trapped or on the defensive in some situation, try doing something that cannot be easily explained or interpreted. Choose a simple action but carry it out in a way that unsettles your opponent, a way with many possible interpretations, making your intentions obscure.
Use the wisdom, knowledge and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.
The credit for an invention or creation os as important, if not more important, than the invention itself. Be vigilant and ruthless, keeping your own creation quiet until you can be sure there are no vultures circling overhead. Learn to take advantage of other people's work to further your own cause.
Sometimes it is not the wise course to take the credit for the work of others. If your power is not firmly enough established, you will seem to be pushing people out of the limelight. To be a brilliant exploiter of talent your position must be unshakable, or you will be accused of deception.
Be sure you know when letting other people share the credit serves your purpose. Do not be greedy when you have a master above you.
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains - then attack. You hold the cards
You must learn how to master your emotions, and never be influenced by anger: meanwhile, you must play on people's natural tendency to react angrily when pushed and baited.
Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: the resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas indirectly. Choose your battles carefully. If it doesn't matter in the long run whether the other person agrees with you, or if time and their own experience will make them understand what you mean, then it is best not even to bother with a demonstration. Save your energy and walk away.
The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot possibly get rid of you.
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicioius people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will.
If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.
The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.
Some people will see an appeal to their self interest as ugly and ignoble, they prefer to be able to exercise charity, mercy and justice, which are their ways of feeling superior to you. Not everyone can be approached through cynical self-interest. Some people are put off by it, they don't want to seem to be motivated by such things.
Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Or play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.
You also must be prepared for them to spy on you. One of the most potent weapons in the battle of information is giving out false information.
If one ember of your enemy is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: the enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.
If you stop halfway or at three quarters and show mercy, your enemy will come back at you more fiercely, more determined than before.
Some would argue that in the long run, it would be better to show some leniency to the Germans in the Treaty of Versailles. The problem is, the leniency involves another risk: it might embolden the enemy, which still harbors a grudge, abut now has some room to operate. It is almost always wiser to crush your enemy. If they plot revenge years later, do not let your guard down, simply crush them again.
Too much circulation makes the price go down: the more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are an already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
What stays too long, inundating us with its presence, makes us disdain it. What withdraws, what becomes scarce, suddenly seems to deserve our respect and honour.
Love never dies of starvation, but of indigestion - Ninon de Lenclos
But only do this once a certain level of power has been attained. Leave too early and you are simply forgotten. In the beginning, make yourself not scarce but omnipresent. Only what is seen, appreciated and loved will be missed in its absence.
Your predictability gives others a sense of control, since humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people's actions. Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keel them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out tryong to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize
People are always trying to read the motives behind your actions and to use your predictability against you. Throw in a completely inexplicable move and you put them in the defensive. Because they do not understand you, they are unnerved, and in such state you can easily intimidate them.
Sometimes it can work against you, especially if you are in a subordinate position. Too much unpredictability can be seen as a sign of indecisiveness. Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disrupting them. Such power should only be used judiciously.
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere: everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from: it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.
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 victimrs and opponents carefully, then: never offend or deceive the wrong person.
Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, do it politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or ridiculous. Never reject them with an insult until you know them better.
In judging and measuring your opponent, never rely on your instincts. Nothing can substitute for gathering concrete knowledge. Study and spy on your opponent for however long it takes. And never trust appearances. Learn to see through appearances and their contradictions. Never trust the version that people give of themselves - it is utterly unreliable.
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others - playing people against one another, making them pursue you.
I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married - Queen Elizabeth I, 1533-1603
No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smarter than you. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.
When you are weaker, never fight for honor's sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you - surrender first. By turning the other cheek you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.
Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another - intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.
Thrive in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. Master the art of indirection: flatter, yield to your superiors and assert power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of couriership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.
The laws of court politics
- Avoid ostentation: do not flaunt your own achievements. Be modest
- Practice nonchalance: never seem to be working too hard. Your talent must appear to flow naturally, with an ease that makes people take you for a genius rather than a workaholic
- Be frugal with flattery
- Arrange to be noticed
- Alter your style and language according to the person you are dealing with
- Never the bearer of bad news
- Never affect friendliness and intimacy with your master: do not think your master is your friend
- Never criticize those above you directly: if you do, do it indirectly. Give no advice, say nothing
- Be frugal in asking those above you for favors: ask favors as rarely as possible, and know when to stop
- Never joke about appearance or taste
- Do not be the court cynic: express admiration for the good work of others
- Be self-observant: be observant of yourself
- Master your emotions
- Fit the spirit of the times
- Be a source of pleasure
The chapter includes several scenes of court life.
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions - your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat's-paws to disguise your involvment.
- Part 1: conceal your mistakes - have a scapegoat around to take the blame
- Part 2: make use of the cat's-paw
- If there is something unpleasant or unpopular that needs to be done, do not do the work yourself. You need a cat's-paw, someone who does the dirty, dangerous work for you.
The easiest and most effective way to use a cat's-paw is often to plant information with him that he will then spread to your primary target. False or planted information is a powerful tool, especially if spread by a dupe whom no one suspects. You will find it very easy to play innocent and disguise yourself as the soursce.
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.
- Keep it vague, keep it simple: don't attract attention with actions, which are too clear and readable, but with words, which are hazy and deceptive. But don't talk too vaguely
- Emphasize the visual and the sensual over the intellectua
- Borrow the forms of organized religion to structure the group
- Disguise your source of income
- Set up an us-versus-them dynamic
One reason to create a following is that a group is often easier to deceive than an individual, and turns over to you that much more power. If at any moment the group sees through you, the crowd will tear you to pieces as avidly as it once followed you.
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold: no one honors the timid.
- The bolder the lie, the better
- Lions circle the hesitant prey
- Boldness strikes fear: fear creates authority
- Going halfway with half a heart digs the deeper grave
- Hesitation creates gaps, boldness obliterates them
- Audacity separates you from the herd
If boldness is not natural, neither is timidity. It is an acquired habit, picked up out of a desire to avoid conflict. Your fears of the consequences of a bold action are way out of proportion to reality, and in fact the consequences of timidity are worse. Your value is lowered and you create a self-fulfilling cycle of doubt and disaster.
Boldness should never be the strategy behind all of your actions. It should be used in the right moment.
The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work - it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: they are gored wherever they turn.
Withdrawal and disappearance are classic ways of controlling the options. You give people a sense of how things will fall apart without you, and you offer them a 'choice': I stay away and you suffer the consequences, or I return under circumstances that I dictate.
The following are among the most common forms of 'controlling the options':
- Color the choices: propose several choices of action for each situation, and present them in such a way that the one you prefer always seems the best compared to the others.
- Force the resister: good technique to use on children and other willful people who enjoy doing the opposite of what you ask them to: push them to 'choose' what you want them to do by appearing to advocate the opposite.
- Alter the playing field: if you are an oil company and you want to buy other oil companies, buy the railway company transporting the oil. And then force the other companies to merge with you, threatening them with raising fees or refusing shipping.
- The shrinking options: raise the price every time the buyer hesitates and another day goes by. This is an excellent negotiating ploy to use on the chronically indecisive.
- The weak man on the principle: similar to 'color the choices', but be more aggressive with the weak. Work on their emotions, if you try their reason they will find a way to procrastinate.
- Brothers in crime: you attract your victims to some criminal scheme, creating a bond of blood and guilt between you.
- The horns of a dilemma: this is a classic trial lawyer technique: lead the witnesses to decide between two possible explanations of an event, both of which poke a hole in their story. They have to answer the questions, but whatever they say they hurt themselves. The key to this move is to strike quickly: deny the victim the time to think of an escape. As they wriggle between the horns of the dilemma, they dig their own grave.
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert. Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.
To gain power, you must be a source of pleasure for those around you: and pleasure comes from playing to people's fantasies. Never promise gradual improvement through hard work: rather, promise the moon, the great and sudden transformation, the pot of gold, in a longer period of time.
People know that change is slow and gradual, requiring hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, and a lot of patience. If you promise a sudden transformation that will bring a total change in one's fortunes, bypassing work, luck, self-sacrifice, and time, people will be all over oyu.
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.
- Pay attention to gestures and unconscious signals
- Find the helpless child: most weaknesses begin in childhood, before the self builds up compensatory defenses. When you touch on a topic, the person will often act like a child. Be on the lookout for any behavior that should have been outgrown
- Look for contrasts: a prudish exterior may hide a lascivious soul
- Find the weak link: find the weak link in the chain, and win their favor
- Fill the void: the two main emotional voids to fill are insecurity and unhappiness
- Feed on uncontrollable emotions
Reversal: playing on people's weakness has a danger, you may stir up an action you cannot control. The more emotional the weakness, the greater the potential danger. Know the limits to this game and never get carried away by your control over your victims.
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: in the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.
If you ask for little, shuffle your feet and lower your head, people will assume this reflects your character.
The Columbus strategy:
- Always make a bold demand. Set your price high and do not waver.
- Go after the highest person in the building. This is the David and Goliath strategy, by choosing a great opponent, you create the appearance of greatness.
- Give a gift of some sort to those above you.
Reversal: never elevate yourself by humiliating people. And don't loom too high above the crowd, you make an easy target.
Never seem to be in a hurry, hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
Play the card of contempt with care and delicacy. Most small troubles will vanish on their own if you let them be, but some will grow and fester unless you attend to them. Develop the skill of sensing problems when they are still small and taking care of them before they become intractable. Learn to distinguish between the potentially disastrous and the mildly irritating.
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power - everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.
The visual is the easiest route to their hearts.
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.
Reversal: some fish are best left at the bottom of the pond.
What is offered for free is dangerous - it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guild and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price - there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.
What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.
Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual: the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them: they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.
The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: when you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The mirror effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of the mirror effect.
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal and when you reach it, stop.
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.