The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Law 1:
Never outshine the master
Make your masters
appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of
power
When it comes to
power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.
Never take your
position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
Law 2: Never
put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies
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
Since honesty
rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly
feels. Friends will say that they love your poetry, adore your music, envy
your taste in clothes— maybe they mean it, often they do not.
The key to power,
then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests
in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and
competent.
Law 3: Conceal Your
Intentions
Use decoyed objects
and desires and red herrings to throw people off the scent
Hide your
intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making
people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—
just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: You appear
friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your
rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.
Use smoke screens
to disguise your actions. This derives from a simple truth: people can only
focus on one thing at a time. It is really too difficult for them to imagine
that the bland and harmless person they are dealing with is simultaneously
setting up something else
As Kierkegaard
wrote, “The world wants to be deceived.”
Law 4: Always say
less than necessary
One oft-told tale
about Kissinger… involved a report that Winston Lord had worked on for days.
After giving it to Kissinger, he got it back with the notation, “Is this the
best you can do?” Lord rewrote and polished and finally resubmitted it; back it
came with the same curt question. After redrafting it one more time— and once
again getting the same question from Kissinger-Lord snapped, “Damn it, yes,
it’s the best I can do. ” To which Kissinger replied: “Fine, then I guess I’ll
read it this time. ”
Persons who cannot
control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of
respect. But the human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains
constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will run wild
and cause you grief. Power cannot accrue to those who squander their
treasure of words.
Power is in many
ways a game of appearances, and when you say less than necessary, you
inevitably appear greater and more powerful than you are.
Learn the lesson:
Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under
control. Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction
you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay.
Law 5: So much
depends on reputation, guard it with your life
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.
Doubt is a powerful
weapon: Once you let it out of the bag with insidious rumors, your opponents
are in a horrible dilemma.
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.
Law 6: Court
attention at all costs
Surround your name
with the sensational and the scandalous.
Better to be
slandered and attacked than ignored.
Every crowd has a
silver lining.
At the start of
your career, you must attach your name and reputation to a quality, an image,
that sets you apart from other people.
Create an air of
mystery.
Remember: Most
people are upfront, can be read like an open book, take little care to control
their words or image, and are hopelessly predictable. By simply holding
back, keeping silent, occasionally uttering ambiguous phrases, deliberately
appearing inconsistent, and acting odd in the subtlest of ways, you will
emanate an aura of mystery. The people around you will then magnify that
aura by constantly trying to interpret you
Do something that
cannot be easily explained or interpreted
Law 7: Get
others to do the work for you, but always take the credit
No notes.
Law 8: Make other
people come to you, use bait if necessary
For negotiations or
meetings, it is always wise to lure others into your territory, or the
territory of your choice. You have your bearings, while they see nothing
familiar and are subtly placed on the defensive.
Law 9: Win
through your actions, never through argument
No notes.
Law 10: Infection: Avoid
the unhappy or the unlucky
When you suspect
you are in the presence of an infector, don’t argue, don’t try to help, don’t
pass the person on to your friends, or you will become enmeshed. Flee the
infector’s presence or suffer the consequences.
Law 11: Learn to keep
people dependent on you
No notes.
Law 12: Use
selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim
No notes.
Law 13: When asking
for help, appeal to people’s self interest, never their mercy or gratitude
No notes.
Law 14: Pose as a
friend, work as a spy
No notes.
Law 15: Crush your
enemy totally
No notes.
Law 16: Use absence
to increase strength and honor
The more you are
seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are 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.
At the start of an
affair, you need to heighten your presence in the eyes of the other. If you
absent yourself too early, you may be forgotten. But once your lover’s
emotions are engaged, and the feeling of love has crystallized, absence
inflames and excites. Giving no reason for your absence excites even more.
Law 17: Keep others
in suspended terror, cultivate an air of unpredictability
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.
Law 18: Do not
build a fortress to protect yourself, isolation is dangerous
No notes.
Law 19: Know who
you’re dealing with, do not offend the wrong person
No notes.
Law 20: Do not
commit to anyone
Do not commit to
anyone, but be courted by all.
When you hold
yourself back, you incur not anger, but a kind of respect. You instantly seem
powerful because you make yourself ungraspable, rather than succumbing to the
group, or to the relationship, as most people do.
People who rush to
the support of others tend to gain a little respect in the process, for their
help is so easily obtained, while those who stand back find themselves besieged
with supplicants.
Do not commit to
anyone, stay above the fray.
Remember: You have
only so much energy and so much time. Every moment wasted on the affairs of
others subtracts from your strength.
Law 21: Play a
sucker to catch a sucker, seem dumber than your mark
Given how important
the idea of intelligence is most people’s vanity, it is critical never inadvertent to insult or impugn a person’s brain power.
Law 22: Use the
surrender tactic: to transform weakness into power
People trying to
make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic.
It is always our first
instinct to react, to meet aggression with some other kind of aggression. But
the next time someone pushes you and you find yourself starting to react, try
this: Do not resist or fight back, but yield, turn the other cheek, bend.
If you surrender
instead, you have an opportunity to coil around your enemy and strike with your
fangs from close up.
Law 23: Concentrate
your forces
Intensity defeats
extensity every time.
Law 24: Play the
perfect courtier
The laws of court
politics:
Avoid ostentationPractice nonchalance frugal with flatteryArrange to be
noticedAlter your style and language according to the person you are dealing
with never be the bearer of bad newsNever affect friendliness and intimacy with
your masterNever criticize those above you directly be frugal in asking those
above you for favorsNever joke about appearances of tastes do not be the court
cynicBe self observantMaster your emotionsFit the spirits of the timesBe the
source of pleasure
Law 25: Re-Create
Yourself
Be the master of
your own image rather than letting others define it for you.
The world wants to
assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed.
Remake yourself
into a character of power. Working on yourself like clay should be one of your
greatest and most pleasurable life tasks.
The first step in
the process of self-creation is self-consciousness— being aware of yourself as
an actor and taking control of your appearance and emotions.
The second step in
the process of self-creation is a variation on the George Sand strategy: the
creation of a memorable character, one that compels attention, that stands out
above the other players on the stage.
Law 26: Keep your
hands clean
Conceal your
mistakes, have a scapegoat around to blame.
Make use of the
cats paw.
Law 27: Play on
people’s need to believe to create a cult like following
Five rules of cult
making
Keep it vague, keep
it simpleEmphasize the visual and sensational over the intellectualBorrow the
forms of organized religion to structure the groupDisguise your source of
incomeSet up an us vs them dynamic
Law 28: Enter
action with boldness
The bolder lie the
better.
Lions circle the
hesitant prey.
Boldness strikes
fear, fear creates authority.
Going halfway with
half a heart digs a deeper grave.
Hesitation creates
gaps, boldness obliterates them.
Audacity separates
you from the herd.
When you are as
small and obscure as David was, you must find a Goliath to attack. The larger
the target, the more attention you gain.
Law 29: Plan all
the way to the end
No notes.
Law 30: Make
your accomplishments seem effortless
No notes.
Law 31: Control the
options, get others to play with the cards you deal
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.
Color the choices,
propose three or four choices of action for each situation, and would present
them in such a way that the one he preferred always seemed the best solution
compared to the others.
Force the resister,
Push them to “choose” what you want them to do by appearing to advocate the
opposite.
Alter the playing
field.
The shrinking
options: A variation on this technique is to 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, who will fall for the idea that they
are getting a better deal today than if they wait till tomorrow.
The weak man on the
precipice: This tactic is similar to “Color the Choices,” but with the
weak you have to be more aggressive. Work on their emotions— use fear and
terror to propel them into action. Try reason and they will always 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: The lawyer leads 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 lawyer’s 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.
Law 32: Play to
people’s fantasies
People rarely
believe that their problems arise from their own misdeeds and stupidity.
Someone or something out there is to blame— the other, the world, the gods— and
so salvation comes from the outside as well.
Law 33: Discover
each man’s thumbscrew
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.
Finding the
thumbscrews
Pay attention to gestures
and unconscious signalsFind the helpless child, look to their childhoodLook for
contrasts, an overt trait often reveals its oppositeFind the weak link,Fill
their emotional voidFeed on their uncontrollable emotion
Always look for
passions and obsessions that cannot be controlled. What people cannot control,
you can control for them.
Law 34: Be royal in
your own fashion. Act like a king to be treated like one
No notes.
Law 35: Master the
art of timing
No notes.
Law 36: Disdain
things you cannot have, ignoring them is the best revenge
Remember: You
choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice
the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your
interest. That is the powerful move.
Desire often creates
paradoxical effects: The more you want something, the more you chase after
it, the more it eludes you. The more interest you show, the more you repel the
object of your desire. This is because your interest is too strong— it makes
people awkward, even fearful. Uncontrollable desire makes you seem weak,
unworthy, pathetic.
Law 37: Create
compelling spectacles
No notes.
Law 38: Think as
you like but behave like others
If Machiavelli had
had a prince for disciple, the first thing he would have recommended him to do
would have been to write a book against Machiavellism.
Law 39: Stir
up waters to catch fish
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.
Law 40: Despise the
free lunch
The worth of money
is not in its possession, but in its use.
Law 41: Avoid
stepping into a great man’s shoes
No notes.
Law 42: Strike the
shepherd and the sheep will scatter
Within any group,
trouble can most often be traced to a single source, the unhappy, chronically
dissatisfied one who will always stir up dissension and infect the group with
his or her ill ease. Before you know what hit you the dissatisfaction spreads.
Act before it becomes impossible to disentangle
Once you recognize
who the stirrer is, pointing it out to other people will accomplish a great
deal.
43: Work on the
hearts and minds of others
Remember: The
key to persuasion is softening people up and breaking them down, gently. Seduce
them with a two-pronged approach: Work on their emotions and play on their
intellectual weaknesses.
44: Disarm and
infuriate with the mirror effect
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.
45: Preach the need
to change, but never reform too much at once
If change is
necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
Even while people
understand the need for change, knowing how important it is for institutions
and individuals to be occasionally renewed, they are also irritated and upset
by changes that affect them personally.
46: Never appear
too perfect
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.
Do not try to help
or do favors for those who envy you; they will think you are condescending to
them.
47: Do not go past
the mark you aimed for. In victory, know when to stop
No notes.
48: Assume
formlessness
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.
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