700 Best Robert Greene Quotes: Power, Success, Life (2023)

1. “Creative Endeavors are by their nature uncertain.”

2. A Positive Attitude Helps You Tackle Challenges

3. “Without a worthy opponent a man or group cannot grow stronger.”

4. “The vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the time.”

5. “Never appeal to truth unless you’re prepared for the anger that comes from disillusionment.”

6. “Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove.”

7. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes

8. “Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.”

9. “It is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

10. “When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.”

11. “The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.”

12. “Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like. —Anton Chekhov”

13. “those who make a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all.”

14. “An appeal to the emotions is far more powerful than an appeal to reason.”

15. “Real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.”

16. “Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.”

17. “He who poses as a fool is not a fool.”

18. “Not to become someone else, but to be more thoroughly yourself.”

19. “Too much respect for other people’s wisdom will make you depreciate your own.”

20. “I am worthy of an abundant life.”

21. “A false path in life is generally something we are attracted to for the wrong reasons—money, fame, attention, and so on. If it is attention we need, we often experience a kind of emptiness inside that we are hoping to fill with the false love of public approval.”

22. The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene

23. “What kills the creative force si not age or lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude.” Robert Greene

24. “Learn to question yourself: Why this anger or resentment? Where does this incessant need for attention come from? Under such scrutiny, your emotions will lose their hold on you. You will begin to think for yourself instead of reacting to what others give you.”

25. “Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly becomes passé, your allies desert you. But if your mind is armed with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself.”

26. “Finally, you must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.”

27. “The mind must not wander from goal to goal, or be distracted by success from its sense of purpose and proportion.”

28. “They are leaving one world behind and entering another. Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confusion they are easily led astray.”

29. “Make other people come to you, use bait if necessary.” Robert Greene

30. “Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.”

31. A Positive Attitude Equals Better Relationships

32. “One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE”

33. “There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy 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.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

34. “Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.”

35. “We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

36. “Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside of them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part.”

37. “Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.”

38. “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.”

39. “Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.” Robert Greene

40. “Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction.”

41. “Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown...”

42. “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. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it.”

43. “Still uncertain as to our identity, we think that what matters in the work world is gaining attention and making friends. And these misconceptions and naïveté are brutally exposed in the light of the real world.”

44. “It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures.”

45. “You are not in a hurry. You prefer a holistic approach. You look at the object of study from as many angles as possible, giving your thoughts added dimensions.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

46. “Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy.”

47. “Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused 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.”

48. “Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies.“

49. “Never waste valuable time or mental peace of mind on the affairs of others - that is too high a price to pay.”

50. “I am becoming financially free, with the help of God.

51. The first move towards mastery is always inward.

52. “In dealing with your career and its inevitable changes, you must think in the following way: You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression. It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly. It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.”

53. “Make both rewards and punishments rare but meaningful.”

54. “The only means to gain one’s ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832”

55. “Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.”

56. “The human tongue is a beast that few can master.”

57. “Sometimes greater danger comes from success and praise than from criticism. If we learn to handle criticism well, it can strengthen us and help us become aware of flaws in our work. Praise generally does harm. Ever so slowly, the emphasis shifts from the joy of the creative process to the love of attention and to our ever-inflating ego. Without realizing it, we alter and shape our work to attract the praise that we crave.”

58. “Do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance.” Robert Greene

59. “Remember: obvious flirting will reveal your intentions too clearly. Better to be ambiguous and even contradictory, frustrating at the same time that you stimulate.”

60. The Best Robert Greene Books of All Time

61. “What if we could find out what causes us to lie about who we are, or to inadvertently push people away?”

62. “The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary”

63. “As Gracián said, “The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.”

64. “Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables; be deliberately unpredictable.”

65. “In 1817 the twenty-two-year-old poet John Keats wrote a letter to his brothers in which he explained his most recent thoughts on the creative process. The world around us, he wrote, is far more complex than we can possibly imagine. With our limited senses and consciousness, we only glimpse a small portion of reality. Furthermore, everything in the universe is in a state of constant flux. Simple words and thoughts cannot capture this flux or complexity. The only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgment on what it all means. The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible. As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgments early on. To accomplish this, he wrote, we must be capable of negating our ego. We are by nature fearful and insecure creatures. We do not like what is unfamiliar or unknown. To compensate for this, we assert ourselves with opinions and ideas that make us seem strong and certain. Many of these opinions do not come from our own deep reflection, but are instead based on what other people think. Furthermore, once we hold these ideas, to admit they are wrong is to wound our ego and vanity. Truly creative people in all fields can temporarily suspend their ego and simply experience what they are seeing, without the need to assert a judgment, for as long as possible. They are more than ready to find their most cherished opinions contradicted by reality.”

66. “Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control. Anger”

67. “Hasty climbers have sudden falls.”

68. “Power is a game, and in games, you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effects of their actions.”

69. “Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.” Robert Greene

70. “Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.”

71. “You can recognize deep narcissists by the following behavior patterns: If they are ever insulted or challenged, they have no defense, nothing internal to soothe them or validate their worth. They generally react with great rage, thirsting for vengeance, full of a sense of righteousness. This is the only way they know how to assuage their insecurities. In such battles, they will position themselves as the wounded victim, confusing others and even drawing sympathy. They are prickly and oversensitive. Almost everything is taken personally. They can become quite paranoid and have enemies in all directions to point to.”

72. “No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you. If you desire an apprenticeship, if you want to learn and set yourself up for mastery, you have to do it yourself,and with great energy.”

73. Remember who you are committed to.

74. “The person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself.” Robert Greene

75. “If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.”

76. “In a world growing increasingly banal and familiar, what seems enigmatic instantly draws attention. Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do. Do not show all your cards.”

77. “Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated”

78. “Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited. Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the spiritual union of two souls.”

79. “True genius, in strategy or anywhere, lies in self-control, self-mastery, presence of mind, fluidity of thought.”

80. “The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas. It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent. To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it the source of our misery. What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude. We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships. We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires. to think more flexibly entails a risk-we could fail and be ridiculed. We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.”

81. “Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.”

82. “Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

83. “Masters are those who by nature have suffered to get to where they are. They have experienced endless criticisms of their work, doubts about their progress, and setbacks along the way.”

84. You are born with a Life Task. Will you ever realize it?

85. “The problem with all students, he said, is that they inevitably stop somewhere. They hear an idea and they hold on to it until it becomes dead; they want to flatter themselves that they know the truth. But true Zen never stops, never congeals into such truths. That is why everyone must constantly be pushed to the abyss, starting over and feeling their utter worthlessness as a student. Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. Not even enlightenment is enough. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.”

86. “I have the ability to achieve all that I desire.”

87. “The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don’t simply absorb information – we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.”

88. “Understand: you are one of a kind. Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history.”

89. “Second, many believe that by being honest and open they are winning people’s hearts and showing their good nature. They are greatly deluded. Honesty is actually a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it cuts. Your honesty is likely to offend people; it is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. More important, by being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you, and power will not accrue to a person who cannot inspire such emotions. If”

90. “Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.”

91. “Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. —NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE”

92. “It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

93. “Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency?”

94. “In our culture we tend to equate thinking and intellectual powers with success and achievement. In many ways, however, it is an emotional quality that separates those who master a field from the many who simply work at a job. Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

95. “The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.”

96. “It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause by yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.”

97. “Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust. Morality, judgment, and concern for the future will all melt away.”

98. Always Say Less Than Necessary

99. “Masters and those who display a high level of creative energy are simply people who manage to retain a sizable portion of their childhood spirit despite the pressures and demands of adulthood.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

100. “Dubai is a safe place, and I never came across anything to worry about.”

101. “No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.”

102. “Try to persuade a person by appealing to their consciousness, by saying outright what you want, by showing all your cards, and what hope do you have? You are just one more irritation to be tuned out.”

103. “Strive For Perfection In Everything. Take The Best That Exists And Make It Better. If It Doesn’t Exist, Create It. Accept Nothing Nearly Right Or Good Enough.”

104. “You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

105. Create Compelling Spectacles

106. “The key to such power is ambiguity. In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.”

107. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent, it is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.” Robert Greene

108. “His moves intrigued her, each of them keeping her waiting for the next one—she even enjoyed her jealousy and confusion, for sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security.”

109. “You must learn to distract your victims with a myriad of pleasant little rituals? thoughtful gifts tailored just for them, clothes and adornments designed to please them, gestures that show the time and attention you are paying them. Mesmerized by what they see, they will not notice what you are really up to.”

110. “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.”

111. ”We are entering a world in which we can rely less and less upon the state, the corporation, or family or friends to help and protect us. It is a globalized, harshly competitive environment. We must learn to develop ourselves.”

112. “We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.” Robert Greene

113. “You don't take people's maneuvers personally; you merely try to defend or advance yourself.”

114. “Just imagine for a day that you do not know anything, that what you believe could be completely false. Let go of your preconceptions and even your most cherished beliefs. Experiment. Force yourself to hold the opposite opinion or see the world through your enemy’s eyes. Listen to the people around you with more attentiveness. See everything as a source for education—even the most banal encounters. Imagine that the world is still full of mystery.”

115. “There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.

116. “If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity . . . you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. —Arthur Schopenhauer”

117. “Remember: the greatest danger you face in the world today is that you are replaceable. As you get older, people who are younger, cheaper and more in tune with trends are rising up and threatening your position. Your only salvation is to mine your uniqueness, to combine various skills that set you apart. No one can do what you do. That is your endgame.”

118. Your task as a creative thinker:

119. “when people overtly display some trait, such as confidence or hypermasculinity, they are most often concealing the contrary reality.”

120. “According to Freud (who was speaking from experience, since he was his mother’s darling), spoiled children have a confidence that stays with them all their lives.”

121. “The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.” – Robert Greene

122. “In a speech Abraham Lincoln delivered at the height of the Civil War,

123. “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.”

124. “We are all self-absorbed, locked in our own worlds. It is a therapeutic and liberating experience to be drawn outside ourselves and into the world of another.”

125. “Develop the skill of sensing problems when they are still small and taking care of them before they become intractable.”

126. “In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”

127. ”You don’t want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained but to find a new way to apply them.

128. Think as You Like But Behave Like Others

129. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. But there is another element, an X factor that Masters inevitably possess, that seems mystical but that is accessible to us all. Whatever field of activity we are involved in, there is generally an accepted path to the top. It is a path that others followed, and because we are conformist creatures, most of us opt for this conventional route. But Masters have a strong inner guiding system and a high level of self-awareness. What has suited others in the past does not suit them, and they know that trying to fit into a conventional mold would only lead to a dampening of spirit, the reality they seek eluding them.

130. “What draws attention draws power”

131. “When it comes to mastering a skill, time is the magic ingredient.” Robert Greene

132. “As Xenophon said, your obstacles are not rivers or mountains or other people; your obstacle is yourself. If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame.”

133. “With such a deep rooted interest you can withstand the setbacks and failures, the days of drudgery, and the hard work that are always a part of any creative action. You can ignore the doubters and critics. You will then feel personally committed to solving the problem and will not rest until you do so.”

134. “little about your work, tease and titillate with alluring, even contradictory comments, then stand back and let others try to make sense of it all.”

135. “Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy 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.”

136. “Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.”

137. “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.”

138. “An enemy who does not respect you will grow bold, and boldness makes even the smallest animal dangerous.”

139. Attaining mastery is extremely necessary and positive.

140. “Never be afraid of the qualities that set you apart and draw attention to you.”

141. “There is almost a touch of condescension in the act of hiring friends that secretly afflicts them. The injury will come out slowly: A little more honesty, flashes of resentment and envy here and there, and before you know it your friendship fades. The more favors and gifts you supply to revive the friendship, the less gratitude you receive.”

142. “person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself,”

143. “Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten. The best way to avoid this fate is to assume formlessness. No predator alive can attack what it cannot see. OBSERVANCE”

144. “The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.”

145. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent, it is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular filed of knowledge.” —Robert Greene, Mastery

146. “Your true self does not speak in words or banal phrases. Its voice comes from deep within you, from the substrata of your psyche, from something embedded physically within you. It emanates from your uniqueness, and it communicates through sensations and powerful desires that seem to transcend you. You cannot ultimately understand why you are drawn to certain activities or forms of knowledge. This cannot really be verbalized or explained. It is simply a fact of nature. In following this voice you realize your own potential, and satisfy your deepest longings to create and express your uniqueness. It exists for a purpose, and it is your Life’s Task to bring it to fruition.”

147. “Only create associations with positive affinities. Make this a rule of life and you will benefit more than from all the therapy in the world.”

148. “The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.”

149. “If there is any instrument you must fall in love with and fetishize, it is the human brain—the most miraculous, awe-inspiring, information-processing tool devised in the known universe, with a complexity we can’t even begin to fathom, and with dimensional powers that far outstrip any piece of technology in sophistication and usefulness.”

150. “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.”

151. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent, it is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.” – Robert Greene

152. “If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you.”

153. “If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.”

154. “Impatience, on the other hand, only makes you look weak. It is a principal impediment to power. Power”

155. “Read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit.”

156. “Masters manage to blend the two—discipline and a childlike spirit—together into what we shall call the Dimensional Mind. Such a mind is not constricted by limited experience or habits. It can branch out into all directions and make deep contact with reality. It can explore more dimensions of the world. The Conventional Mind is passive—it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The Dimensional Mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”

157. Never half-ass your work.

158. “In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.”

159. “Boldness makes even the smallest animal dangerous.” Robert Greene

160. “Every day in every way I am growing richer and richer.

161. “Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers.

162. “Your task as a creative thinker is to actively explore the unconscious and contradictory parts of your personality, and to examine similar contradictions and tensions in the world at large. Expressing these tensions within your work in any medium will create a powerful effect on others, making them sense unconscious truths or feelings that have been obscured or repressed.”

163. “Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.”

164. “With our limited senses and consciousness, we only glimpse a small portion of reality. Furthermore, everything in the universe is in a state of constant flux. Simple words and thoughts cannot capture this flux or complexity. The only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgment on what it all means. The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible. As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgments early on.”

165. “Imperfection is beauty. Anonymous

166. “Mastery, I learned, was not something genetic, or for a lucky few. It is something we can all attain if we get rid of some misconceptions and gain clarity as to the required path.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

167. “Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.”

168. “To help yourself to cultivate serendipity, you should keep a notebook with you at all times. The moment any idea or observation comes, you note it down. You keep the notebook by your bed, careful to record ideas that come in those moments of fringe awareness—just before falling asleep, or just upon waking.”

169. “All of us have access to a higher form of intelligence, one that can allow us to see more of the world, to anticipate trends, to respond with speed and accuracy to any circumstance. This intelligence is cultivated by deeply immersing ourselves in a field of study and staying true to our inclinations, no matter how unconventional our approach might seem to other. Through such intense immersion over many years we come to internalize and gain an intuitive feel with the rational processes, we expand our minds to the outer limits of our potential and are able to see into the secret core of life itself. We then come to have powers that approximate the instinctive force and speed of animals, but with the added reach that our human consciousness brings us. This power is what our brains are designed to attain, and we will naturally lead to this type of intelligence if we follow our inclinations to their ultimate ends.”

170. “Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

171. “Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most.”

172. “Everything is judged by its appearance;

173. “Never pick a fight with someone you're not sure you can defeat.”

174. “If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won't catch on when you lead him into a trap.”

175. “For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.””

176. “Forgetting our objectives. —During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen and commenced as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844”

177. “Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.”

178. “Keep others in suspense, cultivate an air of unpredictability.”

179. “The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents – will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?”

180. “Playing with appearances and mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life.” This Robert Greene quote from the 48 Laws of Power perfectly sums up why you should keep re-creating yourself as a leader.

181. “The need for certainty is the greatest disease the mind faces.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

182. “The mighty lion toys with the mouse that crosses his path—any other reaction would mar his fearsome reputation.”

183. “Strategic warriors operate much differently. They think ahead toward their long-term goals, decide which fights to avoid and which are inevitable, know how to control and channel their emotions. When forced to fight, they do so with indirection and subtle maneuver, making their manipulations hard to trace. In this way they can maintain the peaceful exterior so cherished in these political times.”

184. “We are entering a world in which we can rely less and less upon the state, the corporation, or family or friends to help and protect us. It is a globalized, harshly competitive environment. We must learn to develop ourselves.”

185. “In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

186. “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 a powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it.”

187. “Most of us live in a semi-somnambulistic state: we do our daily tasks and the days fly by. The two exceptions to this are childhood and those moments when we are in love. In both cases, our emotions are more engaged, more open and active. And we equate feeling emotional with feeling more alive.”

188. “A sense of urgency comes from a powerful connection to the present”

189. “The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

190. “The human mind is naturally creative, constantly looking to make associations and connections between things and ideas. It wants to explore, to discover new aspects of the world, and to invent. To express this creative force is our greatest desire, and the stifling of it is the source of our misery. What kills the creative force is not age or a lack of talent, but our own spirit, our own attitude. We become too comfortable with the knowledge we have gained in our apprenticeships. We grow afraid of entertaining new ideas and the effort that this requires. To think more flexibly entails a risk—we could fail and be ridiculed. We prefer to live with familiar ideas and habits of thinking, but we pay a steep price for this: our minds go dead from the lack of challenge and novelty; we reach a limit in our field and lose control over our fate because we become replaceable.”

191. “The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed.”

192. “Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”

193. “You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task—what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live. In childhood this force was clear to you. It directed you toward activities and subjects that fit you natural inclinations, that sparked a curiosity that was deep and primal. In the intervening years, the force tends to fade in and out as you listen more to parents and peers, to the daily anxieties that wear away at you. This can be the source of your unhappiness—your lack of connection to who you are and what makes you unique. The first move toward mastery is always inward—learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force. Knowing it with clarity, you will find your way to the proper career path and everything else will fall into place. It is never too late to start this process.”

194. “It is often the height of wisdom to find the perfect mentor and offer your services as an assistant for free.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

195. “Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

196. “Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity--precisely the time when

197. “Do not fight them. Instead, think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance”

198. “take special note of how people respond to stressful situations—often the mask they wear in public falls off in the heat of the moment.”

199. Do not fall for the romantic myths and clichés about Mastery.

200. “Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.” Robert Greene

201. Do Not Go Past the Mark You Aimed For; In Victory, Learn When to Stop

202. ”Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

203. “Your unhappiness is a way of speaking to you, it’s telling you something isn’t right.”

204. Assume Formlessness

205. “It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

206. “When you move toward mastery, your brain becomes radically altered by the years of practice and active experimentation. It is no longer the simple ecosystem of years gone by. The brain of a Master is so richly interconnected that it comes to resemble the physical world, and becomes a vibrant ecosystem in which all forms of thinking associate and connect. This growing similarity between the brain and complex life itself represents the ultimate return to reality.”

207. “No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

208. Focus on strengths more than weaknesses.

209. “Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit.”

210. A Positive Attitude Creates A More Active Mind

211. “As Xenophon said, your obstacles are not rivers or mountains or other people; your obstacle is yourself. If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only”

212. “It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most. If it is money, you will choose a place for your apprenticeship that offers the biggest paycheck. Inevitably, in such a place you will feel greater pressures to prove yourself worthy of such pay, often before you are really ready. You will be focused on yourself, your insecurities, the need to please and impress the right people, and not on acquiring skills. It will be too costly for you to make mistakes and learn from them, so you will develop a cautious, conservative approach. As you progress in life, you will become addicted to the fat paycheck and it will determine where you go, how you think, and what you do. Eventually, the time that was not spent on learning skills will catch up with you, and the fall will be painful.”

213. Discover Each Person’s Thumbscrew

214. Mastery is a never-ending pursuit.

215. “What is important when you are young, is to train yourself to get by with little money and make the most of your youthful energy.”

216. “There are two kinds of failure: The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy 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.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

217. “Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion”

218. “In a world in which many people are indecisive and overly cautious, the use of speed will bring you untold power.”

219. “Athena came to represent a very particular form of nous—eminently practical, feminine, and earthy. She is the voice that comes to heroes in times of need, instilling in them a calm spirit, orienting their minds toward the perfect idea for victory and success, then giving them the energy to achieve this. To be visited by Athena was the highest blessing of them all, and it was her spirit that guided great generals and the best artists, inventors, and tradesmen. Under”

220. “...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 tun wild and cause you grief.”

221. “Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown…”

222. “You cannot repress anger or love, or avoid feeling them, and you should not try.”

223. “you must engrave deeply in your mind and never forget: your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated into your work.

224. “If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

225. “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 the real ones.

226. “In the realm of power, everything must be judged by its cost, and everything has a price.”

227. “When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.”

228. “In essence, when you practice and develop any skill you transform yourself in the process. You reveal to yourself new capabilities that were previously latent, that are exposed as you progress. You develop emotionally. Your sense of pleasure becomes redefined. What offers immediate pleasure comes to seem like a distraction, an empty entertainment to help pass the time. Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. You develop patience. Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.”

229. “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

230. “Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.”

231. Play Into People’s Fantasies

232. Enter Action with Boldness

233. “Know who you're dealing with. Do not offend the wrong person.”

234. “Everything I want is on it’s way to me now.”

235. “person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.”

236. “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.”

237. So Much Depends on Reputation—Guard It With Your Life

238. “Life goes by very fast. And the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, and have no energy and creativity in.” Robert Greene

239. “A bold act requires a high degree of confidence. People who are the targets of an audacious act, or who witness it, cannot help but believe that such confidence is real and justified. They respond instinctively by backing up, by getting out of the way, or by following the confident person. A bold act can put people on their heels and eliminate obstacles. In this way, it creates its own favorable circumstances. ”

240. “Life goes by very fast. And the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you’re not creative with and you’re not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.”

241. “When the snipe and the mussel struggle, the fisherman gets the benefit. Ancient Chinese saying”

242. Never Outshine the Master

243. “In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

244. “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, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.”

245. “A Prince asked the dying spanish statesman, "Does your Excellency forgive all your enemies?" "I do not have to forgive all my enemies," answered the stateman, "I have had them all shot.”

246. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

247. A Positive Attitude Leads To A More Fulfilling Life

248. Preach the Need for Change but Never Reform Too Much at Once

249. “Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves.”

250. “Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.”

251. “Your faith in yourself should overcome your insecurities. Imagine yourself a king and you will become a king.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

252. “Targets with active minds are dangerous: If they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts. Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a non-defensive attitude with a charged sexual presence.”

253. “Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.”

254. “What I want wants me.”

255. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep will Scatter

256. “Without enemies around us, we grow lazy. An enemy at our heels sharpens our wits, keeping us focused and alert. It is sometimes better, then, to use enemies as enemies rather than transforming them into friends or allies.”

257. “Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.”

258. “You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

259. “Become the curator of life. Edit, leave out the junk. But when you find something worth keeping, treasure it.” Robert Greene

260. “The need for certainty is the greatest disease the Mind faces.”

261. “The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?”

262. The best way to neutralize our natural impatience is to cultivate a kind of pleasure in pain — like an athlete, you come to enjoy rigorous practice, pushing past your limits, and resisting the easy way out.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

263. “But improvisation will only bring you as far as the next crisis, and is never a substitute for thinking several steps ahead and planning to the end.”

264. “Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target.”

265. ”You cannot have everything in the present. The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.”

266. “In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their life’s task.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

267. “Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower.”

268. “You must understand the following: In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”

269. Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cult-Like Following

270. “You cannot have everything in the present. The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.”

271. “Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.” – Robert Greene

272. “It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.”

273. “You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.”

274. ”Move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you.”

275. The way of suffering and doubt is the way.

276. “Creativity is by its nature an act of boldness and rebellion. You are not accepting the status quo or conventional wisdom. You are playing with the very rules you have learned, experimenting and testing the boundaries. The world is dying for bolder ideas, for people who are not afraid to speculate and investigate. Creeping conservatism will narrow your searches, tether you to comfortable ideas, and create a downward spiral—as the creative spark leaves you, you will find yourself clutching even more forcefully to dead ideas, past successes, and the need to maintain your status. Make creativity rather than comfort your goal and you will ensure far more success for the future.”

277. “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.”

278. “DESPISE THE FREE LUNCH JUDGMENT 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, guilt, 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.”

279. “Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil. Power is a game—this cannot be repeated too often—and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions.”

280. “LAW 9 WIN THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, NEVER THROUGH ARGUMENT JUDGMENT 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.”

281. “Without suffering and doubts, the mind will come to rest on clichés and stay there, until the spirit dies as well. You must continually start over and challenge yourself.”

282. “There are very few men—and they are the exceptions—who are able to think and feel beyond the present moment. CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ, 1780-1831”

283. “Most people are perpetually locked in the present. Their decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

284. “Pushing against the passive trend of these times, you must work to see how far you can extend control of your circumstances and create the kind of mind you desire – not through drugs but through action.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

285. “In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.”

286. The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene (FREE Summary)

287. “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. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement.

288. “‘Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process.”

289. “There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold 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. In fact, it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt. You will fail to question the element of luck, making you think that you have the golden touch. When you do inevitably fail, it will confuse and demoralize you past the point of learning. You have everything to gain.”

290. “Image: An Oak Tree. The oak that resists the wind loses its branches one by one, and with nothing left to protect it, the trunk fi nally snaps. The oak that bends lives long er, its trunk grow ing wider, its roots deeper and more tenacious.”

291. “Many of the greatest Masters in history have confessed to experiencing some kind of force or voice or sense of destiny that has guided them forward.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

292. “You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task —what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live.”

293. “While a friend expects more and more favors, and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expected nothing and got everything. A man suddenly spared the guillotine is a grateful man indeed, and will go to the ends of the earth for the man who has pardoned him.”

294. “Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.”

295. “When it comes to mastering a skill, time is the magic ingredient.”

296. “It is never wise to purposefully do without the benefits of having a mentor in your life. You will waste valuable time in finding and shaping what you need to know. But sometimes you have no choice.”

297. “Successful seductions begin with your character, your ability to radiate some quality that attracts people and stirs their emotions in a way that is beyond their control.”

298. “The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves, they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead. ”

299. “Your emotional commitment to what you are doing will be translated directly into your work. If you go at your work with half a heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end. If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and that has no connection to you. You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it and that they will receive your work in the same lackluster spirit it was created in. If you are excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details. If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated.”

300. “What excites me about America is its social mobility, people continually rising from the bottom to the top and altering the culture in the process. On another level, however, we remain a nation that lives in social ghettos. Celebrities generally congregate around other celebrities; academics and intellectuals are cloistered in their worlds; people like to associate with those of their kind. If we leave these narrow worlds, it is usually as an observer of another way of life.”

301. “The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”

302. “A mind content both crown and kingdom is.” Robert Greene

303. “People who do not practice and learn new skills never gain a proper sense of proportion or self-criticism. They think they can achieve anything without effort and have little contact with reality. Trying something over and over again grounds you in reality, making you deeply aware of your inadequacies and of what you can accomplish with more work and effort.”

304. “Too often we make a separation in our lives—there is work and there is life outside work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so we can enjoy that second life that we lead. Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way. This is a depressing attitude, because in the end we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to real pleasure, then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live.”

305. “Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks [...]. In reality, Cleopatra was physically unexceptional and had no political power, yet both Caesar and Antony, brave and clever men, saw none of this. What they saw was a woman who constantly transformed herself before their eyes, a one-woman spectacle.

306. “The problem is that we humans are deep conformists.”

307. “The best way to neutralize our natural impatience is to cultivate a kind of pleasure in pain – like an athlete, you come to enjoy rigorous practice, pushing past your limits, and resisting the easy way out.” Robert Greene

308. “In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

309. “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.”

310. “Confidence is important, but if it is not based on a realistic appraisal of who you are, it is mere grandiosity and smugness.”

311. “a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all. The only means to gain one’s ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832”

312. “If the world is like a giant scheming court and we are trapped inside it, there is no use in trying to opt out of the game. That will only render you powerless, and powerlessness will make you miserable. Instead of struggling against the inevitable, instead of arguing and whining and feeling guilty, it is far better to excel at power. In fact, the better you are at dealing with power, the better friend, lover, husband, wife, and person you become.”

313. Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit

314. “The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.” – Robert Greene

315. “An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.”

316. “At your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life's Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it--as a force, a voice or in whatever form-- the greater your chance of fulfilling this Life's Task and achieving mastery.”

317. “Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others – that is too high a price to pay.”

318. “If the happiness and prosperity of other people depend on you, you have nothing to fear anymore.” Robert Greene

319. “Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world”

320. “Exhibit remarkable confidence and people will think your confidence comes from real knowledge. You will create a self-fulfilling prophecy: people’s belief in you will translate into actions that help realize your visions.”

321. “Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy. Kautilya, Indian philosopher third century B.C. OBSERVANCE”

322. “Your faith in yourself should overcome your insecurities. Imagine yourself a king and you will become a king.” Robert Greene

323. “No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow. You will be assailed by varieties of hidden pain. Most often you deviate because of the lure of money, of more immediate prospects of prosperity.Because this does not comply with something deep within you, your interest will lag and eventually the money will not come so easily.”

324. “If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

325. “All of us have access to a higher form of intelligence, one that can allow us to see more of the world, to anticipate trends, to respond with speed and accuracy to any circumstance. This intelligence is cultivated by deply immersing ourselves in a field of study and staying true to our inclinations, no matter how unconventional our approach might seem to other. Through such intense immersion over many years we come to internalize and gain an intuitive feel with the rational processes, we expand our minds to the outer limits of our potential and are able to see into the secret core of life itself. We then come to have powers that approximate the instinctive force and speed of animals, but with the added reach that our human consciousness brings us. This power is what our brains are designed to attain, and we will naturally led to this type of intelligence if we follow our inclinations to their ultimate ends.”

326. “It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.”

327. “We are all in search of feeling more connected to reality—to other people, the times we live in, the natural world, our character, and our own uniqueness. Our culture increasingly tends to separate us from these realities in various ways. We indulge in drugs or alcohol, or engage in dangerous sports or risky behavior, just to wake ourselves up from the sleep of our daily existence and feel a heightened sense of connection to reality. In the end, however, the most satisfying and powerful way to feel this connection is through creative activity. Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not merely consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves.”

328. Setbacks, failures, and hardships are seeds for further cultivation.

329. “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. —ALBERT EINSTEIN”

330. Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect

331. “You must see your attempt at attaining mastery as something extremely necessary and positive. The world is teeming with problems, many of them of our own creation. To solve them will require a tremendous amount of effort and creativity. Relying on genetics, technology, magic, or being nice and natural will not save us. We require the energy not only to address practical matters, but also to forge new institutions and orders that fit our changed circumstances. We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.”

332. “Never pick a fight with someone you’re not sure you can defeat.”

333. “Excuses satisfy no one and apologies make everyone uncomfortable”

334. “The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.”

335. “Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks...”

336. Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal

337. “Become who you are by learning who you are.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

338. “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

339. “Win through your actions, never through argument.”

340. “What really makes successful entrepreneurs is not the nature of their idea, or the university they went to , but their actual character – their willingness to adapt their ideas and take advantage of possibilities they had not first imagined.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

341. Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them Gives You Power

342. “Acted like a king to be treated like one.”

343. “Slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Familiarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then. Intrigue your targets by alternating an exciting presence with a cool distance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences.”

344. “Accustom yourself to criticism. Confidence is important, but if it is not based on a realistic appraisal of who you are, it is mere grandiosity and smugness.” – Robert Greene

345. “It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible.”

346. “the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character—the first transformation on the way to mastery. You enter a career as an outsider. You are naïve and full of misconceptions about this new world. Your head is full of dreams and fantasies about the future. Your knowledge of the world is subjective, based on emotions, insecurities, and limited experience. Slowly, you will ground yourself in reality, in the objective world represented by the knowledge and skills that make people successful in it. You will learn how to work with others and handle criticism. In the process you will transform yourself from someone who is impatient and scattered into someone who is disciplined and focused, with a mind that can handle complexity. In the end, you will master yourself and all of your weaknesses.”

347. “Hesitation creates gaps. Boldness obliterates them.”

348. “friendship and love blind every man to their interests.”

349. “The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

350. “Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.” Robert Greene

351. “So much of power is not what you do but what you do not do—the rash and foolish actions that you refrain from before they get you into trouble.”

352. “Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

353. “Sometimes, however, it is better to take risks and play the most capricious, unpredictable move.”

354. Best Robert Greene Quotes

355. “Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly—not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. Retaining a memory of this Original Mind, we cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world. As the years pass, this intensity inevitably diminishes. We come to see the world through a screen of words and opinions; our prior experiences, layered over the present, color what we see. We no longer look at things as they are, noticing their details, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked.”

356. Do Not Commit to Anyone

357. “Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.”

358. “The people around you are generally mysterious. You are never quite sure about their intentions. They present an appearance that is often deceptive—their manipulative actions don’t match their lofty words or promises. All of this can prove confusing. Seeing people as they are, instead of what you think they should be, would mean having a greater sense of their motives.”

359. “Most people are perpetually locked in the present. Their decisions are overly influenced by the most immediate event; they easily become emotional and ascribe greater significance to a problem than it should have in reality.”

360. “Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.”

361. “Do not waste time on things you cannot change or influence.”

362. “To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance. If you can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have them at your mercy.”

363. “Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

364. “Boldness makes even the smallest animal dangerous.”

365. “You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.”

366. “Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; and if it is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach. —MARCUS AURELIUS”

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

368. “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

369. Mastery - Robert Greene (FREE Summary)

370. “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 the real ones.”

371. ”You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task —what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live.”

372. “I believe that everything happens for a reason, and what seems bad at first might, in fact, be something of a blessing.”

373. “You may grow frustrated and depressed, never realizing that the source of it is your alienation from your own creative potential.”

374. “Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

375. “As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

376. “It was only by escaping into the desert that Moses and the Jews were able to solidify their identity and reemerge as a social and political force.

377. “Mastery is not a question of genetics of luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desires that stirs you from within.”

378. “Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.”

379. “Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests. A master who cannot bestow on you the gifts of his experience may direct rancor and ill will at you instead.”

380. “The pain and boredom we experience in the initial stage of learning a skill toughens our minds.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

381. “The principle is simple and must be engraved deeply in your mind: the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character — the first transformation on the way to mastery.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

382. “Your fears are a kind of prison that confines you within a limited range of action. The less you fear, the more power you will have and the more fully you will live.”

383. “You must learn to stir people’s curiosity by letting them glimpse something in your private life.”

384. “An ecosystem that has the maximum amount of diversity is the richest.”

385. “Always say less than necessary.”

386. “A seduction should never settle into a comfortable routine. The middle and later chapters will instruct you in the art of alternating hope and despair, pleasure and pain, until your victims weaken and succumb.”

387. Practice and learn new skills. Or else…

388. “we tend to think of our behavior as largely conscious and willed. To imagine that we are not always in control of what we do is a frightening thought, but in fact it is the reality.”

389. The world is dying for more creativity.

390. “Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target. You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.”

391. “Routine life is unbearable, and most people only think about how to escape into the world of fantasy and dreams.” Robert Greene

392. “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.”

393. “Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process. The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents—will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?”

394. Be Royal in Your Own Fashion: Act like a King to Be Treated Like One

395. “Understand: the greatest impediment to creativity is your impatience, the almost inevitable desire to hurry up the process, express something, and make a splash. What happens in such a case is that you do not master the basics; you have no real vocabulary at your disposal. What you mistake for being creative and distinctive is more likely an imitation of other people’s style, or personal rantings that do no really express anything. Audiences, however, are hard to fool. They feel the lack of rigor, the imitative quality, the urge to get attention, and they turn their backs, or give the mildest praise that quickly passes.”

396. Plan All the Way to the End

397. “People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.”

398. “You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success.”

399. “Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust. Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.”

400. “To have a good enemy, choose a friend: He knows where to strike. DIANF DE POITIERS, 1499-1566, MISTRESS OF HENRI II OF FRANCE”

401. “Defeat Them in Detail: The Divide and Conquer Strategy. Look at the parts and determine how to control the individual parts, create dissension and leverage it.”

402. “The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires.”

403. “Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in your doubts about yourself – worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.” Robert Greene

404. “Mentors have their own strengths and weaknesses. The good ones allow you to develop your own style and then to leave them when the time is right. Such types can remain lifelong friends and allies. But often the opposite will occur. They grow dependent on your services and want to keep you indentured. They envy your youth and unconsciously hinder you, or become overcritical. You must be aware of this as it develops. Your goal is to get as much out of them as possible, but at a certain point you may pay a price if you stay too long and let them subvert your confidence. Your submitting to their authority is by no means unconditional, and in fact your goal all along is eventually to find your way to independence, having internalized and adapted their wisdom.”

405. “Seduction is a game of psychology, not beauty, and it is within the grasp of any person to become a master at the game. All that is required is that you look at the world differently, through the eyes of a seducer.”

406. Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument

407. “For the future, the motto is, "No days unalert.”

408. “We want to learn the lesson and not repeat the experience. But in truth, we do not like to look too closely at what we did; our introspection is limited. Our natural response is to blame others, circumstances, or a momentary lapse of judgment.”

409. “Every day you face battles—that is the reality for all creatures in their struggle to survive. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end.”

410. “Perhaps you are not trying to whip a crowd into a frenzy; you just want to bring people over to your side. Choose your strategy and words carefully. You might think it is better to reason with people, explain your ideas. But it is hard for an audience to decide whether an argument is reasonable as they listen to you talk. They have to concentrate and listen closely, which requires great effort. People are easily distracted by other stimuli, and if they miss a part of your argument, they will feel confused, intellectually inferior, and vaguely insecure. It is more persuasive to appeal to people’s hearts than their heads. Everyone shares emotions, and no one feels inferior to a speaker who stirs up their feelings. The crowd bonds together, everyone contagiously experiencing the same emotions.”

411. “It is up to you to set your own price. Ask for less and that is what you will ger. Ask for more, however, and you send a signal that you are worth a king’s ransom. Even those who turn you down will respect your confidence, and that will pay off in ways you can’t imagine.” Robert Greene

412. “As an apprentice, it can be hard for us to challenge ourselves on our own in the proper way, and to get a clear sense of our own weaknesses. The times that we live in make this even harder. Developing discipline through challenging situations and perhaps suffering along the way are no longer values that are promoted in our culture. People are increasingly reluctant to tell each other the truth about themselves—their weaknesses, their inadequacies, flaws in their work. Even the self-help books designed to set us straight tend to be soft and flattering, telling us what we want to hear—that we are basically good and can get what we want by following a few simple steps. It seems abusive or damaging to people’s self-esteem to offer them stern, realistic criticism, to set them tasks that will make them aware of how far they have to go. In fact, this indulgence and fear of hurting people’s feelings is far more abusive in the long run. It makes it hard for people to gauge where they are or to develop self-discipline. It makes them unsuited for the rigors of the journey to mastery. It weakens people’s will.”

413. “We see people not as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.”

414. “It is natural to want to employ your friends when you find yourself in times of need. The world is a harsh place, and your friends soften the harshness. Besides, you know them. Why depend on a stranger when you have a friend at hand? Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. TACITUS, c. A.D. 55-120 The problem is that you often do not know your friends as well as you imagine. Friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. They laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes. 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. When you decide to hire a friend, you gradually discover the qualities he or she has kept hidden. Strangely enough, it is your act of kindness that unbalances everything. People want to feel they deserve their good fortune. The receipt of a favor can become oppressive: It means you have been chosen because you are a friend, not necessarily because you are deserving. There is almost a touch of condescension in the act of hiring friends that secretly afflicts them. The injury will come out slowly: A little more honesty, flashes of resentment and envy here and there, and before you know it your friendship fades. The more favors and gifts you supply to revive the friendship, the less gratitude you receive. Ingratitude has a long and deep history. It has demonstrated its powers for so many centuries, that it is truly amazing that people continue to underestimate them. Better to be wary. If you never expect gratitude from a friend, you will be pleasantly surprised when they do prove grateful. The problem with using or hiring friends is that it will inevitably limit your power. The friend is rarely the one who is most able to help you; and in the end, skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.”

415. “it is a curse to have everything go right on your first attempt.”

416. “The most effective attitude to adopt is one of supreme acceptance. The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways. Some people have dark qualities that are especially pronounced. You cannot change such people at their core, but must merely avoid becoming their victim. You are an observer of the human comedy, and by being as tolerant as possible, you gain a much greater ability to understand people and to influence their behavior when necessary.”

417. “Creative endeavors are by their nature uncertain.” Robert Greene

418. “Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter”

419. “True ownership can come only from within. It comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement.”

420. “I expect lavish abundance every day in every way.”

421. “If we experience any failures or setbacks, we do not forget them because they offend our self-esteem. Instead, we reflect on them deeply, trying to figure out what went wrong and discern whether there are any patterns to our mistakes.”

422. “You don’t want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained,but to find a new way to apply them. Your eye is on the future, not the past.Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path for us—we are shaken out of our complacency and forced to reassess where we are headed.”

423. “Instead of spending your time dreaming of your plan’s happy ending, you must work on calculating every possible permutation and pitfall that might emerge in it.”

424. “In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn.”

425. “Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated.”

426. “Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused 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.”

427. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

428. Concentrate Your Forces

429. “[Strategy] is more than a science: it is the application of knowledge to practical life, the development of thought capable of modifying the original guiding idea in the light of ever-changing situations; it is the art of acting under the pressure of the most difficult conditions. HELMUTH VON MOLTKE, 1800–1891”

430. “I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

431. “There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.”

432. “This world wasn’t built by people with small vision and minor thoughts. It was built by the misfits, eccentrics and oddballs who had the courage to passionately follow the voice of their dreams.”

433. “When you turn your back on someone, they come running after you.”

434. “Power is not what we do but what we do not – hasty and unwise actions that we repeat every day and which ultimately bring us into trouble.”

435. “When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.”

436. “The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self - our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

437. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker— Appear Dumber Than Your Mark

438. “Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

439. “Everyone has to defend himself.” Robert Greene

440. “The root cause of all passive aggression is the human fear of direct confrontation—the emotions that a conflict can churn up and the loss of control that ensues.”

441. Be a creator rather than a consumer.

442. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

443. “Your new identity will protect you from the world precisely because it is not “you”; it is a costume you put on and take off. You need not take it personally. And your new identity sets you apart, gives you theatrical presence. Those in the back rows can see you and hear you. Those in the front rows marvel at your audacity.”

444. “They all overvalued the importance of stability.”

445. “Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.”

446. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

447. “KEYS TO WARFARE The world is full of people looking for a secret formula for success and power. They do not want to think on their own; they just want a recipe to follow. They are attracted to the idea of strategy for that very reason. In their minds strategy is a series of steps to be followed toward a goal. They want these steps spelled out for them by an expert or a guru. Believing in the power of imitation, they want to know exactly what some great person has done before. Their maneuvers in life are as mechanical as their thinking. To separate yourself from such a crowd, you need to get rid of a common misconception: the essence of strategy is not to carry out a brilliant plan that proceeds in steps; it is to put yourself in situations where you have more options than the enemy does. Instead of grasping at Option A as the single right answer, true strategy is positioning yourself to be able to do A, B, or C depending on the circumstances. That is strategic depth of thinking, as opposed to formulaic thinking.”

448. “Become who you are by learning who you are.”

449. “12--Lose Battles, But Win The War: Grand Strategy

450. “There are many paths to mastery, and if you are persistent you will certainly find one that suits you. But a key component in the process is determining your mental and psychological strengths and working with them. To rise to the level of mastery requires many hours of dedicated focus and practice. You cannot get there if your work brings you no joy and you are constantly struggling to overcome your own weaknesses. You must look deep within and come to an understanding of these particular strengths and weaknesses you possess, being as realistic as possible. Knowing your strengths, you can lean on them with utmost intensity. Once you start in this direction, you will gain momentum. You will not be burdened by conventions, and you will not be slowed down by having to deal with skills that go against your inclinations and strengths. In this way, your creative and intuitive powers will be naturally awakened.”

451. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

452. “Every seduction has two elements that you must analyze and understand: first, yourself and what is seductive about you; and second, your target and the actions that will penetrate their defenses and create surrender.”

453. “A man grows bored with a woman, no matter how beautiful; he yearns for different pleasures, and for adventure.”

454. Play the Perfect Courtier

455. Make the human brain your priority.

456. “Bring your targets back to that point by placing yourself in the oedipal triangle and positioning them as the needy child. Unaware of the cause of their emotional response, they will fall in love with you.”

457. “All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.”

458. With A Positive Attitude You Will Be Happier

459. “If you are observing someone you naturally dislike, or who reminds you of someone unpleasant in your past, you will tend to see almost any cue as unfriendly or hostile. You will do the opposite for people you like. In these exercises you must strive to subtract your personal preferences and prejudices about people.”

460. “Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.”

461. “Think of the mind as a river: the faster it flows, the better it keeps up with the present and responds to change. The faster it flows, also the more it refreshes itself and the greater its energy. Obsessional thoughts, past experiences (whether traumas or

462. “It is often the height of wisdom to find the perfect mentor and offer your services as an assistant for free. ” – Robert Greene, Mastery

463. “You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression. It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly. It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.”

464. “Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.”

465. “Mastery is not a question of genetics of luck, but of following your natural inclinations and the deep desires that stirs you from within.” Robert Greene

466. “The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

467. “Increase your power and your image will gain reliability.” Robert Greene

468. “Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown…”

469. “Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry... makes people compete for the attention.”

470. “Do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance”

471. Mastery is a function of focus, time, and deliberate practice. And an X factor…

472. “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 cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.”

473. “Become the curator of life. Edit, leave out the junk. But when you find something worth keeping, treasure it.”

474. “Be as fluid as water, do not give your enemies anything solid to atack.”

475. “While your cool, nonchalant air is lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing? oozing sex and desire? are getting under their skin and raising their temperature. ”

476. “The key to staying unintimidated is to convince yourself that the person you're facing is a mere mortal, no different from you-- which is in fact the truth. See the person, not the myth. Imagine him or her as a child, as someone riddled with insecurities. Cutting the other person down to size will help your keep your mental balance.”

477. “who can you trust?”

478. “It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.”

479. Never Appear Too Perfect

480. “Space we can recover, time never. Napoleon Bonaparte, 1769-1821”

481. “Men do not understand how women think, and vice versa; each tries to make the other act more like a member of their own sex.”

482. “Only By Thinking Prosperity And Abundance Can You Realize The Abundant, Prosperous Life.”

483. “Be a flame of positive emotions and you will never be without a friend.”

484. Remember that there are two kinds of failure:

485. Re-Create Yourself

486. Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies

487. “It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.” – Robert Greene

488. Praise is more dangerous than criticism.

489. “When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others”

490. “The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.”

491. “You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.”

492. “We could express this power in the following way: Most of the time we live in an interior world of dreams, desires, and obsessive thoughts. But in this period of exceptional creativity, we are impelled by the need to get something done that has a practical effect. We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality. Instead of flitting here and there in a state of perpetual distraction, our minds focus and penetrate to the core of something real. At these moments, it is as if our minds—turned outward—are now flooded with light from the world around us, and suddenly exposed to new details and ideas, we become more inspired and creative.”

493. “USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM JUDGMENT 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 suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift—a Trojan horse—will serve the same purpose.”

494. “People who have experienced a certain kind of pleasure in the past will try to repeat or relive it. The deepest-rooted and most pleasurable memories are usually those from earliest childhood, and are often unconsciously associated with a parental figure. ”

495. “It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life.”

496. “Never appear overly greedy for attention, then, for it signals insecurity, and insecurity drives power away. Understand that there are times when it is not in your interest to be the center of attention. When in the presence of a king or queen, for instance, or the equivalent thereof, bow and retreat to the shadows; never compete.”

497. “You must value learning above everything else.”

498. “Everyone has doubts and insecurities? about their body, their self-worth, their sexuality. If your seduction appeals exclusively to the physical, you will stir up these doubts and make your targets self-conscious.”

499. “Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.”

500. “if no resistances or obstacles face you, you must create them. No seduction can proceed without them.”

501. What separates those who attain mastery from those who simply work at a job:

502. “The Shadow. It cannot be grasped. Chase your shadow and it will, flee; turn your back on it and it will follow you. It is also a person’s dark side, the thing that makes them mysterious. After they have given us pleasure, the shadow of their withdrawal makes us yearn for their return, much as clouds make us yearn for the sun.”

503. “Eventually, you will hit upon a particular field, niche, or opportunity that suits you perfectly. You will recognize it when you find it because it will spark that childlike sense of wonder and excitement; it will feel right. Once found, everything will fall into place. You will learn more quickly and more deeply . your skills level will reach a point where you will be able to claim your independence from within the group you work for and move out on your own. you will determine your circumstances. As your own Master, you will no longer be subject to the whims of tyrannical bosses or scheming peers.”

504. “In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it.”

505. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

506. “What does it matter if another player, your friend or rival, intended good things and had only your interests at heart, if the effects of his action lead to so much ruin and confusion? It is only natural for people to cover up their actions with all kinds of justifications, always assuming that they have acted out of goodness. You must learn to inwardly laugh each time you hear this and never get caught up in gauging someone’s intentions and actions through a set of moral judgments that are really an excuse for the accumulation of power.”

507. “There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.”

508. “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

509. Remember: your Life’s Task is a living, breathing organism. The moment you rigidly follow a plan set in your youth, you lock yourself into a position, and the times will ruthlessly pass you by.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

510. “Chance favors on the prepared mind.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

511. “Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519”

512. “Learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.”

513. “Understanding the world too well, you see too many options and become as indecisive as Hamlet.

514. “You can die from someone else’s misery — emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.”

515. “If there is something you want but you cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem. ”

516. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

517. Wish There Was a Faster/Easier Way?

518. “Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social settings he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practice boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man(even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).

519. “Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.”

520. “No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.”

521. “But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself.”

522. “Aim at secret wishes that have been thwarted or repressed, stirring up uncontrollable emotions, clouding their powers of reason. Lead the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality.”

523. Take action and believe in yourself. Dreams do come true.

524. “The Tiny Wound. It is small but painful and irritating. You try all sorts of medicaments, you com- plain, you scratch and pick at the scab. Doctors only make it worse, transforming the tiny wound into a grave matter. If only you had left the wound alone, letting time heal it and freeing yourself of worry.”

525. “Fear is the oldest and strongest emotion known to man, something deeply inscribed in our nervous system and subconscious. Over time, however, something strange began to happen. The actual terrors that we faced began to lessen in intensity as we gained increasing control over our environment. But instead of our fears lessening a well, they began to multiply in number. We started to worry about our status in society- whether people liked us, or how we fit into the group. We became anxious for our livelihoods, the future of our families and children, our personal health, and the aging process. Instead of a simple, intense fear of something powerful and real, we developed a kind of generalized anxiety. ”

526. “My life is overflowing with joy, love, and abundance.”

527. “The moment you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

528. “Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.”

529. “Power is not what we do but what we do not – hasty and unwise actions that we repeat every day and which ultimately bring us into trouble.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

530. “Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.”

531. “Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being”

532. “If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.”

533. “In the course of your life you will be continually encountering fools. There are simply too many to avoid.

534. “When you have success, be extra wary. When you are angry, take no action. When you are fearful, know you are going to exaggerate the dangers you face.”

535. “At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.”

536. “Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become – an individual, a Master.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

537. “Your eye is on the future, not the past. Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path for us—we are shaken out of our complacency and forced to reassess where we are headed.”

538. “Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man.... Above all, keep yourself free of commitments and obligations—they are the device of another to get you into his power.... (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658) PART”

539. Don’t question why… Trust in nature and start taking action.

540. “Large sums of money come to me quickly and easily.”

541. “If, for example, you are miserly by nature, you will never go beyond a certain limit; only generous souls attain greatness.”

542. Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.

543. Know Who You’re Dealing With— Don’t Offend the Wrong Person

544. When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude

545. “Our successes and failures in life can be traced to how well or how badly we deal with the inevitable conflicts that confront us in society.”

546. “Power is a game, and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effects of their actions.”

547. “Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.”

548. “Any titles, money, or privilege you inherit are actually hindrances. They delude you into believing you are owed respect.”

549. “Remember: The paranoid and wary are often the easiest to deceive. Win their trust in one area and you have a smoke screen that blinds their view in another, letting you creep up and level them with a devastating blow.”

550. “Giving too much can be a sign of desperation, as if you were trying to buy someone.”

551. “The only real impediment to [mastering a skill] is yourself and your emotions—boredom, panic, frustration, insecurity. You cannot suppress such emotions—they are normal to the process and are experienced by everyone, including Masters. What you can do is have faith in the process. The boredom will go away once you enter the cycle. The panic disappears after repeated exposure. The frustration is a sign of progress—a signal that your mind is processing complexity and requires more practice. The insecurities will transform into their opposites when you gain mastery. Trusting this will all happen, you will allow the natural learning process to move forward, and everything else will fall into place.”

552. “Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.”

553. “Such is the fate, in some form or other, of all those who unbalance the master’s sense of self, poke holes in his vanity, or make him doubt his pre-eminence.”

554. “Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

555. “Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good.”

556. “An isolated person is weak. By slowly isolating your victims, you make them more vulnerable to your influence. Take them away from their normal milieu, friends, family, home. Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo? ”

557. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish

558. “Lofty words of love and grand gestures can be suspicious: Why are you trying so hard to please? The details of a seduction? the subtle gestures, the offhand things you do? are often more charming and revealing.”

559. “JUDGMENT Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused 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.”

560. “[M]any believe that by being honest and open they are winning people’s hearts and showing their good nature.They are greatly deluded. Honesty is actually a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it cuts. Your honesty is likely to offend people; it is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. More important, by being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you, and power will not accrue to a person who cannot inspire such emotions.”

561. “Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection.”

562. ”Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come.”

563. “Sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security.”

564. “If you’re just letting the time pass at your job, it’s just dead time and you’ll never get it back. If at that job you’re learning and you’re observing and you’re seeing about people and connections, it’s suddenly alive time.”

565. “Power is not what we do but what we do not – hasty and unwise actions that we repeat every day and which ultimately bring us into trouble.” Robert Greene

566. “The first move toward mastery is always inward — learning who you really are and reconnecting with that innate force.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

567. Conceal Your Intentions

568. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim

569. “Despise The Free Lunch”

570. “Understand: to create a meaningful work of art or to make a discovery or invention requires great discipline, self-control, and emotional stability. It requires mastering the forms of your field. Drugs and madness only destroy such powers. Do not fall for the romantic myths and clichés that abound in culture about creativity—offering us the excuse or panacea that such powers can come cheaply. When you look at the exceptionally creative work of Masters, you must not ignore the years of practice, the endless routines, the hours of doubt, and the tenacious overcoming of obstacles these people endured. Creative energy is the fruit of such efforts and nothing else.”

571. “What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes.”

572. “From a very early age Edison became used to doing things for himself, by necessity. His family was poor, and by the age of twelve he had to earn money to help his parents. He sold newspapers on trains, and traveling around his native Michigan for his job, he developed an ardent curiosity about everything he saw. He wanted to know how things worked—machines, gadgets, anything with moving parts. With no schools or teachers in his life, he turned to books, particularly anything he could find on science. He began to conduct his own experiments in the basement of his family home, and he taught himself how to take apart and fix any kind of watch. At the age of fifteen he apprenticed as a telegraph operator, then spent years traveling across the country plying his trade. He had no chance for a formal education, and nobody crossed his path who could serve as a teacher or mentor. And so in lieu of that, in every city he spent time in, he frequented the public library. One book that crossed his path played a decisive role in his life: Michael Faraday’s two-volume Experimental Researches in Electricity. This book became for Edison what The Improvement of the Mind had been for Faraday. It gave him a systematic approach to science and a program for how to educate himself in the field that now obsessed him—electricity. He could follow the experiments laid out by the great Master of the field and absorb as well his philosophical approach to science. For the rest of his life, Faraday would remain his role model. Through books, experiments, and practical experience at various jobs, Edison gave himself a rigorous education that lasted about ten years, up until the time he became an inventor. What made this successful was his relentless desire to learn through whatever crossed his path, as well as his self-discipline. He had developed the habit of overcoming his lack of an organized education by sheer determination and persistence. He worked harder than anyone else. Because he was a consummate outsider and his mind had not been indoctrinated in any school of thought, he brought a fresh perspective to every problem he tackled. He turned his lack of formal direction into an advantage. If you are forced onto this path, you must follow Edison’s example by developing extreme self-reliance. Under these circumstances, you become your own teacher and mentor. You push yourself to learn from every possible source. You read more books than those who have a formal education, developing this into a lifelong habit. As much as possible, you try to apply your knowledge in some form of experiment or practice. You find for yourself second-degree mentors in the form of public figures who can serve as role models. Reading and reflecting on their experiences, you can gain some guidance. You try to make their ideas come to life, internalizing their voice. As someone self-taught, you will maintain a pristine vision, completely distilled through your own experiences—giving you a distinctive power and path to mastery.”

573. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent, it is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

574. “You must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its kind of nature permits, rather than to hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it offhand for what it is. This is the true sense of the maxim—Live and let live…. To become indignant at [people’s] conduct is as foolish as to be angry with a stone because it rolls into your path. And with many people the wisest thing you can do, is to resolve to make use of those whom you cannot alter. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER”

575. “You are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become—an individual, a Master.”

576. The Art of Seduction - Robert Greene

577. “The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”

578. Make Other People Come to You—Use Bait if Necessary

579. “The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

580. “I give thanks that I am rich, well, and happy.”

581. “In fact, the better you are at dealing with power, the better friend, lover, husband, wife, and person you become.”

582. At your birth, a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your life’s task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it — as a force, a voice or in whatever form — the greater your chance of fulfilling this life’s task and achieving mastery.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

583. “There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses. You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.”

584. “To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger.”

585. “Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own belief and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware.”

586. “The pain and boredom we experience in the initial stage of learning a skill toughens our minds.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

587. “Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent”

588. The 50th Law - Robert Greene

589. “Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emperors crown themselves.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

590. “Too much respect for other people's wisdom will make you depreciate your own.”

591. “Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.”

592. Court Attention at All Costs

593. “Making money or being successful should be a natural result of this ideal and not the goal itself.”

594. Despise the Free Lunch

595. “Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come.”

596. “When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity… you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others”

597. “Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it.”

598. “What good is it to have the greatest dream in the world if others reap the benefits and the glory? Never lose your head over a vague, open-ended dream—plan to the end.”

599. Crush Your Enemy Totally

600. “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.”

601. Make sure your values are aligned before you start your journey.

602. Embrace the challenges as opportunities for transformation.

603. “For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.”

604. “Accustom Yourself To Criticism. Confidence Is Important, But If It Is Not Based On A Realistic Appraisal Of Who You Are, It Is Mere Grandiosity And Smugness.”

605. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.”

606. “Understand: we live in the world of a sad separation that began some five hundred years ago when art and science split apart.”

607. “If everything in a dream were realistic, it would have no power over us; if everything were unreal, we would feel less involved in its pleasures and fears. Its fusion of the two is what makes it haunting.”

608. “You must see every setback, failure, or hardship as a trial along the way, as seeds that are being planted for further cultivation, if you know how to grow them. No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience. By constantly applying yourself to the subject that suits your inclinations and attacking it from many different angles, you are simply enriching the ground for these seeds to take root. You may not see this process in the present, but it is happening. Never losing your connection to your Life’s Task, you will unconsciously hit upon the right choices in your life. Over time, mastery will come to you.”

609. “Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger”

610. “Men are so simple of mind, and so much dominated by their immediate needs, that a deceitful man will always find plenty who are ready to be deceived.”

611. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

612. “The people with money were meddling in mechanical and design affairs. They were interjecting their mediocre ideas into the process and polluting it.”

613. “Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.”

614. The steep price of becoming too comfortable:

615. “Life has more meaning in the face of Death.”

616. “Instead, lure them out of their insecurities by making them focus on something sublime and spiritual: a religious experience, a lofty work of art, the occult. ”

617. “Most people don't have the patience to absorb their minds in the fine points and minutiae that are intrinsically part of their work. They are in a hurry to create effects and make a splash; they think in large brush strokes.

618. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”

619. “There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing is more dangerous.”

620. “The dreamers, those who misread the actual state of affairs and act upon their emotions, are often the source of the greatest mistakes in history—the wars that are not thought out, the disasters that are not foreseen”

621. “Be as fluid as water, do not give your enemies anything solid to attack.” Robert Greene

622. Master the Art of Timing

623. A Positive Attitude Breeds Productivity

624. Keep Your Hands Clean

625. “Never rush into the waiting arms of the first person who seems to like you. That is not seduction but insecurity.”

626. “What offers immediate pleasure comes to seem like a distraction, an empty entertainment to help pass the time. Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings.”

627. “The more Coriolanus said, the less powerful he appeared—a person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.”

628. You are the only thing holding yourself back.

629. “The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.” Robert Greene

630. “Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them. Once you find that, you have the magical key that will put great power in your hands.”- The 48 Laws of Power

631. “The passive ironic attitude is not cool or romantic, but pathetic and destructive.”

632. “No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

633. “I give my mind the liberty to follow the first wise or foolish idea that presents itself,”

634. “The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” Robert Greene

635. “Be royal in your own fashion: act like a king to be treated like one.” Robert Greene

636. “I attract abundance and prosperity with ease.”

637. “You must value learning about everything else. This will lead you to all the right choices.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

638. “Move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you.”

639. “Keep others in suspense, cultivate an air of unpredictability.” Robert Greene

640. “If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity … you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. —Arthur Schopenhauer”

641. “The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures. Make your return to the path a resolution you set for yourself, and then tell others about it. It becomes a matter of shame and embarrassment to deviate from this path. In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.”

642. “In our culture we tend to equate thinking and intellectual powers with success and achievement. In many ways, however, it is an emotional quality that separates those who master a field from the many who simply work at a job. Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”

643. “The Athenians were one of the most eminently practical people in history, and they made the most practical argument they could with the Melians: When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. No one comes to help the weak—by doing so they would only put themselves in jeopardy. The weak are alone and must submit. Fighting gives you nothing to gain but martyrdom, and in the process a lot of people who do not believe in your cause will die.”

644. “If you view everything through the lens of fear, then you tend to stay in retreat mode. You can just as easily see a crises or problem as a challenge, an opportunity to prove your mettle, the chance to strengthen and toughen yourself, or a call to collective action. By seeing it as a challenge, you will have converted this negative into a positive purely by a mental process that will result in positive action as well. ”

645. “People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.”

646. “You must be the mirror, training your mind to try to see yourself as others see you.”

647. “You Can Kill The Dreamer, But You Can’t Kill The Dream.”

648. “There are many paths to mastery, and if you are persistent you will certainly find one that suits you.

649. “Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused 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

650. “Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

651. “Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic—it makes people come to you.”

652. “Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. TACITUS, c. A.D. 55-120”

653. “Be royal in your own fashion. Act like a king to be treated like one.”

654. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself— Isolation is Dangerous

655. “Mastery is not a function of I.Q. or natural talent or wealthy parents who can send you to the best school, but rather the result of going through a learning process, fueled by the desire to grow and the persistence to push past any obstacles.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

656. “In the stories of the greatest Masters, past and present, we can inevitably detect a phase in their lives in which all of their future powers were in development , like the chrysalis of a butterfly. This part of their lives — a largely self-directed apprenticeship that lasts some five to ten years — receives little attention because it does not contain stories of great achievement or discovery.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

657. “There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing is more dangerous.” Robert Greene

658. “Exhibit remarkable confidence and people will think your confidence comes from real knowledge.

659. “Understand: as an individual you cannot stop the tide of fantasy and escapism sweeping a culture. But you can stand as an individual bulwark to this trend and create power for yourself. You were born with the greatest weapon in all of nature—the rational, conscious mind. It has the power to expand your vision far and wide, giving you the unique capacity to distinguish patterns in events, learn from the past, glimpse into the future, see through appearances. Circumstances are conspiring to dull that weapon and render it useless by turning you inward and making you afraid of reality.

660. “Seeing this foolishness within you, you can then accept it in others. This will allow you to smile at their antics, to tolerate their presence as you would a silly child, and to avoid the madness of trying to change them.”

661. “And no matter how hard she tries to distance herself from it, the taint of being easy always follows”

662. “Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even of those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion.”

663. Impatience is the ultimate impediment to success.

664. “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.”

665. “The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.”

666. “A natural response when people feel overwhelmed is to retreat into various forms of passivity. If we don’t try too much in life, if we limit our circle of action, we can give ourselves the illusion of control. The less we attempt, the less chances of failure. If we can make it look like we are not really responsible for our fate, for what happens to us in life, then our apparent powerlessness is more palatable.”

667. “Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process.”

668. “skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.”

669. “Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.” Robert Greene

670. “Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.”

671. “In moving toward mastery, you are bringing your mind closer to reality and to life itself. Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed or it will die.”

672. “Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans a fire. La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680 OBSERVANCE”

673. “Love is a lock that linketh noble minds.” Robert Greene

674. Brace yourself, because that brain of yours is about to become radically altered.

675. “You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.”

676. “The conventional mind is passive – it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.”

677. “Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused 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.”

678. “Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge. But there is another element, an X factor that Masters inevitably possess, that seems mystical but that is accessible to us all. Whatever field of activity we are involved in, there is generally an accepted path to the top. It is a path that others have followed, and because we are conformist creatures, most of us opt for this conventional route. But Masters have a strong inner guiding system and a high level of self-awareness. What has suited others in the past does not suit them, and they know that trying to fit into a conventional mold would only lead to a dampening of spirit, the reality they seek eluding them. And so inevitably, these Masters, as they progress on their career paths, make a choice at a key moment in their lives: they decide to forge their own route, one that others will see as unconventional, but that suits their own spirit and rhythms and leads them closer to discovering the hidden truths of their objects of study. This key choice takes self-confidence and self-awareness—the X factor that is necessary for attaining mastery.”

679. “It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.”

680. “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.”

681. “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.”

682. “Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose.”

683. “All of us are born unique. This uniqueness is marked genetically in our DNA. We are a one-time phenomenon in the universe – our exact genetic makeup has never occurred before nor will it ever be repeated.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

684. The Laws of Human Nature - Robert Greene

685. “We must create our own world or we will die from inaction.”

686. “You must avoid at all cost, the ida that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.” — Robert Greene, Mastery

687. “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.”

688. “The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.”

689. ”You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression. It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly. It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.”

690. “Understand: the greatest generals, the most creative strategists, stand out not because they have more knowledge but because they are able, when necessary, to drop their preconceived notions and focus intensely on the present moment. That is how creativity is sparked and opportunities are seized. Knowledge, experience, and theory have limitations: no amount of thinking in advance can prepare you for the chaos of life, for the infinite possibilities of the moment. The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.”

691. “If there is something you want but you cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.”

692. “Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others—that is too high a price to pay.”

693. Keep your focus 5 and 10 years down the road.

694. “The moment you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay.” – Robert Greene, Mastery

695. “A Great Attitude Is Not The Result Of Success; Success Is The Result Of A Great Attitude.”

696. “In all of these areas, the human brain is asked to do and handle more than ever before. We are dealing with several fields of knowledge constantly intersecting with our own, and all of this chaos is exponentially increased by the information available through technology. What this means is that all of us must possess different forms of knowledge and an array of skills in different fields, and have minds that are capable of organizing large amounts of information. The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways. And the process of learning skills, no matter how virtual, remains the same. In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them—those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can never focus enough to learn. The Apprenticeship Phase is more relevant and important than ever, and those who discount this notion will almost certainly be left behind. Finally, we live in a culture that generally values intellect and reasoning with words. We tend to think of working with the hands, of building something physical, as degraded skills for those who are less intelligent. This is an extremely counterproductive cultural value. The human brain evolved in intimate conjunction with the hand. Many of our earliest survival skills depended on elaborate hand-eye coordination. To this day, a large portion of our brain is devoted to this relationship. When we work with our hands and build something, we learn how to sequence our actions and how to organize our thoughts. In taking anything apart in order to fix it, we learn problem-solving skills that have wider applications. Even if it is only as a side activity, you should find a way to work with your hands, or to learn more about the inner workings of the machines and pieces of technology around you. Many Masters”

697. “Understand: your mind is weaker than your emotions. But you become aware of this weakness only in moments of adversity,precisely the time when

698. “It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.”

699. “Don’t think about why you question, simply don’t stop questioning. Don’t worry about what you can’t answer, and don’t try to explain what you can’t know. Curiosity is its own reason. Aren’t you in awe when you contemplate the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure behind reality? And this is the miracle of the human mind—to use its constructions, concepts, and formulas as tools to explain what man sees, feels and touches. Try to comprehend a little more each day. Have holy curiosity. —ALBERT EINSTEIN”

700. “you often do not know your friends as well as you imagine. Friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. They laugh extra hard at each other’s jokes. 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. When”

701. “You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.”

702. “Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.”

703. “Some people never become who they are; they stop trusting in themselves; they conform to the tastes of others, and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become — an individual, a Master.” — Robert Greene, Mastery