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48 Laws of Power Book Review on Quora: Unbiased Analysis and Insights

The 48 laws of power book review on quora.

Are you looking for a thought-provoking and insightful book that delves into the intricate dynamics of power and human behavior? Look no further than “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. This book has sparked numerous discussions on Quora and has garnered a loyal following of readers who are eager to dissect and analyze its principles.

Why The 48 Laws of Power Stands Out

With its timeless wisdom and captivating storytelling, “The 48 Laws of Power” has captured the attention of readers from all walks of life. Its thought-provoking insights on human behavior and the strategies for gaining and maintaining power have made it a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the dynamics of influence and persuasion.

Personal Reflections

As someone who has delved into the depths of “The 48 Laws of Power,” I can attest to the profound impact it has had on my understanding of human nature and the strategies employed by influential figures throughout history. Law is by examples and that bring the to life, making it engaging and read.

Key Takeaways from Quora Discussions

Quora has been a hub for thought-provoking discussions on “The 48 Laws of Power,” with readers sharing their interpretations and real-life applications of the book`s principles. Here some takeaways from Quora discussions:

Engage in Conversations on Quora

If intrigued by themes principles in “The 48 Laws of Power,” Quora a of and that your of the book. Engage with readers, your, and new on the principles of power and influence.

Legal Q&A: 48 Laws of Power Book Review Quora

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The 48 laws of power by robert greene - review, summary, analysis & facts.

Author - Who Wrote?

Robert Greene

Publication Date:

January 1, 1998

Country & Original Language

United States, English

Point of View

The book is written in the second person, addressing the reader directly and providing advice on how to navigate power dynamics.

Number of Pages:

2- synopsis.

"The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene is a provocative exploration of the dynamics and strategies of power. Drawing on historical examples from politics, war, and business, Greene outlines 48 laws that encapsulate the principles of acquiring and maintaining power. Each law is illustrated with anecdotes and stories of individuals who either successfully applied or failed to adhere to these principles. From mastering the art of timing to cultivating an air of unpredictability, the book provides readers with a guide to understanding and navigating the complex world of power dynamics. While some may view the laws as controversial and Machiavellian, Greene's work encourages readers to approach power with a strategic mindset, ultimately leaving them with a thought-provoking examination of the subtle and often ruthless forces at play in the pursuit of influence.

"The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene is a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics, strategies, and nuances surrounding the acquisition and utilization of power. Published in 1998, the book is a culmination of Robert Greene's extensive research into historical and contemporary sources, drawing on examples from various fields such as politics, warfare, and business to illustrate the principles of power.

The book is structured around 48 laws, each encapsulating a specific aspect of power. These laws are presented in a didactic and often provocative manner, urging readers to contemplate and internalize the principles. Greene's approach is unapologetically pragmatic, focusing on the realities of power dynamics rather than prescribing moral judgments. The laws range from advice on cultivating an aura of unpredictability to the strategic use of language and maintaining a sense of mystery.

Throughout the book, Greene supports each law with historical anecdotes and examples. The figures he cites include statesmen, military leaders, and other influential individuals who either successfully wielded power or faced downfall due to their failure to adhere to these principles. By examining the successes and failures of historical figures, Greene aims to distill patterns and lessons that can be applied in contemporary situations.

The laws are not presented as a rigid code but rather as a set of tools that can be adapted to different circumstances. Greene emphasizes the importance of flexibility and situational awareness, encouraging readers to apply the laws judiciously and adapt their strategies to the ever-changing dynamics of power.

One of the central themes of the book is the concept of "Machiavellianism," drawing inspiration from Niccolò Machiavelli's "The Prince." Greene acknowledges the ruthlessness often associated with power and suggests that understanding and, to some extent, embracing these characteristics can be advantageous in navigating the complexities of the real world.

The narrative style is didactic, with each law presented in a concise and clear manner. Greene's prose is accessible, making the book engaging for a wide range of readers. Despite the controversial nature of some of the laws, the author encourages readers to think critically and adapt the principles to their own ethical framework.

"The 48 Laws of Power" has garnered both praise and criticism. Supporters laud its strategic insights and practical advice, considering it a valuable guide for those interested in understanding and navigating power dynamics. Critics, on the other hand, argue that the book promotes manipulation and unethical behavior.

In conclusion, "The 48 Laws of Power" is a thought-provoking exploration of the timeless and universal principles that govern the acquisition and application of power. It serves as a manual for understanding the often intricate and ruthless nature of human interaction, challenging readers to reflect on their own values and navigate the complex landscape of power with strategic acumen.

The 48 Laws (List):

Law 1: Never Outshine the Master

Avoid overshadowing those in power; make them feel superior to avoid jealousy and resentment.

Law 2: Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends; Learn How to Use Enemies

Be cautious with confidences; allies can turn into rivals, and enemies can be useful.

Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions

Reveal little about your true goals to maintain an element of surprise and advantage.

Law 4: Always Say Less Than Necessary

Avoid unnecessary information; the less you say, the more control you maintain.

Law 5: So Much Depends on Reputation—Guard It with Your Life

Cultivate a positive reputation as it influences how others perceive and treat you.

Law 6: Court Attention at All Costs

Ensure you are noticed; obscurity is detrimental to acquiring power and influence.

Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit

Delegate effectively, but claim credit to enhance your image and influence.

Law 8: Make Other People Come to You—Use Bait If Necessary

Draw people to you, allowing you to control the situation and dictate terms.

Law 9: Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument

Demonstrate your abilities and achievements; actions speak louder than words.

Law 10: Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

Associate with positive individuals; negativity can hinder your progress.

Law 11: Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

Create dependencies to secure loyalty and maintain control.

Law 12: Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim

Strategic honesty and generosity can disarm others and make them more receptive.

Law 13: When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude

Frame requests in a way that aligns with others' self-interest to increase the likelihood of assistance.

Law 14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

Appear friendly while gathering information to use to your advantage.

Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally

Eliminate threats completely; leaving remnants can lead to future challenges.

Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

Create value by making your presence scarce.

Law 17: Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

Maintain an element of surprise and unpredictability to keep others on edge.

Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself—Isolation is Dangerous

Being too isolated can make you vulnerable; build alliances and networks.

Law 19: Know Who You're Dealing with—Do Not Offend the Wrong Person

Be aware of power structures and avoid unnecessary conflicts with influential individuals.

Law 20: Do Not Commit to Anyone

Maintain flexibility and avoid being tied down; commitments can limit your options.

Law 21: Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker—Seem Dumber than Your Mark

Appear less intelligent than you are to disarm and manipulate others.

Law 22: Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

Occasionally surrender strategically to gain long-term advantage.

Law 23: Concentrate Your Forces

Focus your efforts and resources to maximize impact.

Law 24: Play the Perfect Courtier

Adapt to the norms of your environment; be flexible and attuned to social dynamics.

Law 25: Re-Create Yourself

Adapt your persona to suit your goals and the changing circumstances.

Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean

Avoid direct involvement in controversial or dirty matters to maintain your reputation.

Law 27: Play on People's Need to Believe to Create a Cult-like Following

Tap into people's desire for a cause or leader to build loyalty and support.

Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness

Act decisively and with confidence to instill a sense of awe and fear.

Law 29: Plan All the Way to the End

Anticipate potential obstacles and plan for contingencies.

Law 30: Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Downplay the effort behind your achievements to make them more impressive.

Law 31: Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal

Manipulate situations to limit others' choices and enhance your control.

Law 32: Play to People's Fantasies

Appeal to what people desire or dream of to gain influence.

Law 33: Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew

Identify individuals' vulnerabilities to gain leverage in negotiations.

Law 34: Be Royal in Your Own Fashion—Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One

Project confidence and authority to be perceived as powerful.

Law 35: Master the Art of Timing

Understand the optimal moments to act or refrain from action.

Law 36: Disdain Things You Cannot Have—Ignoring Them Is the Best Revenge

Focus on what is attainable and ignore what is beyond your control.

Law 37: Create Compelling Spectacles

Capture attention through impressive and memorable displays.

Law 38: Think as You Like but Behave Like Others

Adapt to social expectations while maintaining individual thoughts and strategies.

Law 39: Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish

Create chaos to exploit the resulting opportunities.

Law 40: Despise the Free Lunch

Nothing is truly free; be wary of obligations tied to seemingly generous offers.

Law 41: Avoid Stepping into a Great Man's Shoes

Do not attempt to replace a powerful figure directly; it invites unnecessary challenges.

Law 42: Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep Will Scatter

Target the source of leadership to weaken an organization or group.

Law 43: Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

Influence emotions to gain support and cooperation.

Law 44: Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect

Reflect others' emotions and tactics back at them to disarm and frustrate.

Law 45: Preach the Need for Change, But Never Reform Too Much at Once

Advocate for change, but implement it gradually to avoid resistance.

Law 46: Never Appear Too Perfect

Flaws make you more relatable and less threatening.

Law 47: Do Not Go Past the Mark You Aimed For—In Victory, Know When to Stop

Avoid excessive ambition or overreach; know when to stop and consolidate.

Law 48: Assume Formlessness

Adaptability is crucial; be flexible and unpredictable to respond effectively to changing circumstances.

4- Analysis

Historical perspective:.

One of the book's strengths is its use of historical examples to illustrate each law. Greene draws on a wide range of historical figures, from Machiavelli to modern-day leaders, to highlight the application of these laws in different context.

Machiavellian Influence:

The book is heavily influenced by Niccolò Machiavelli's work, particularly "The Prince." Like Machiavelli, Greene argues that power is amoral, and the pursuit of power often requires strategic and sometimes ruthless actions.

Strategic Thinking:

Greene emphasizes the importance of strategic thinking and the ability to navigate complex social and professional landscapes. The laws are presented as strategies that individuals can employ to achieve and maintain power.

Controversial Nature:

The book is not without its critics. Some argue that the laws promote manipulation, deceit, and a win-at-all-costs mentality. Critics caution against applying these principles blindly, as they may lead to negative consequences and damage relationships.

Adaptability:

An underlying theme is adaptability. The laws suggest that individuals should be flexible in their approach, adjusting their strategies based on the circumstances. This adaptability is seen as a key element in the pursuit and retention of power.

Application in Various Arenas:

Greene applies the laws to different arenas, including politics, business, and personal relationships. This broad scope allows readers to consider the relevance of the laws in diverse situations.

Ethical Considerations:

The book raises ethical questions about the means used to achieve power. While some laws may be seen as pragmatic and effective, others may be considered morally questionable. Readers are encouraged to critically evaluate the ethical implications of each law.

Individual Empowerment:

"The 48 Laws of Power" can be viewed as a guide for individual empowerment. By understanding power dynamics, readers may gain insights into how to navigate competitive environments and achieve their goals

Cautionary Tales:

The book includes cautionary tales of those who failed to heed the laws, emphasizing the potential pitfalls of ignoring strategic thinking in the pursuit of power.

Subjectivity of Power:

Power is presented as a subjective concept, and the book suggests that one's perception of power and success may differ from societal norms. This individualistic approach encourages readers to define and pursue their own version of power.

Main lessons from the book:

Power is a Game: The book portrays power as a game with its own rules, strategies, and dynamics. Understanding and playing by these rules can increase one's chances of success.

Observation and Strategy: Greene emphasizes the importance of keen observation and strategic thinking. Being aware of the motivations, strengths, and weaknesses of oneself and others is crucial in the pursuit and maintenance of power.

Adaptability and Flexibility: The idea of "Assume Formlessness" underscores the importance of adaptability. Being able to change strategies and approaches based on the circumstances is seen as a key trait for those seeking power.

Control of Emotions and Information: The book advises on the importance of controlling emotions and being strategic about the information one reveals. Emotional reactions and transparency can be used against an individual, and strategic communication is essential.

Avoiding Predictability: Predictability is considered a weakness. The book encourages individuals to avoid becoming too easily understood or anticipated by others. Maintaining an element of unpredictability can be an advantage.

Understanding Human Nature: Many of the laws in the book are based on an understanding of human nature, including desires, fears, and motivations. Recognizing these aspects of human behavior is presented as essential for effective power dynamics.

Balancing Confidence and Humility: While projecting confidence and strength is emphasized, there is also a recognition of the importance of humility. It is suggested that humility can be a strategic tool in certain situations.

"The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene is nothing short of a cerebral rollercoaster through the intricate web of human dynamics. From the outset, Greene captivates with his exploration of power, drawing on historical examples that range from the cunning to the ruthless.

The book's allure lies in its unapologetic confrontation of the darker aspects of human nature. Greene doesn't sugarcoat; he delves deep into the realms of manipulation, strategy, and cunning, offering readers a candid glimpse into the often unspoken rules that govern power dynamics.

As I navigated through the 48 laws, I found myself oscillating between awe and discomfort. Greene's storytelling prowess breathes life into historical anecdotes, making the principles tangible and relatable. Each law is a double-edged sword, a tool that can be wielded for personal gain or, in some instances, a warning against falling victim to the same tactics.

While the book is undeniably thought-provoking, it is not without controversy. Greene's unabashed endorsement of strategic cunning may leave some readers uneasy, as the moral implications of some laws can be unsettling. It's essential to approach the content critically, recognizing that the author presents a spectrum of strategies, not all of which may align with one's personal values.

Is reading "The 48 Laws of Power" worth the investment of time and mental energy?

The worth of reading "The 48 Laws of Power" hinges on one's willingness to engage with its provocative content. If you approach the book as a source of insights into the multifaceted nature of power dynamics, it can be a compelling and intellectually stimulating read. The historical examples and strategic principles provide a unique perspective on human behavior and offer a roadmap for navigating complex social landscapes. However, it's crucial to read with a discerning mind, recognizing that not all the presented strategies may align with one's ethical framework. If you are open to exploring the darker aspects of power and can extract lessons without necessarily endorsing every tactic, then the book has the potential to broaden your understanding of human relationships and the pursuit of influence.

6- About the Auhtor

Robert Greene, the mastermind behind "The 48 Laws of Power," is a renowned author and strategist known for his profound insights into human behavior. Born on May 14, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Greene has carved a niche for himself as a keen observer of power dynamics throughout history. With a background in classical studies and a degree in classical literature, he brings a unique blend of scholarship and pragmatism to his works.

Greene's writing transcends traditional genres, seamlessly blending historical anecdotes, psychological analysis, and strategic wisdom. In addition to "The 48 Laws of Power," his other notable works include "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "Mastery." Greene's approach is characterized by a deep dive into the complexities of human nature, offering readers unconventional perspectives on success, strategy, and the pursuit of power.

Beyond his literary contributions, Robert Greene has become a sought-after speaker and consultant, sharing his expertise on power dynamics and strategy with a diverse range of audiences. His ability to distill timeless principles from historical narratives has earned him acclaim among readers seeking a deeper understanding of the forces that shape human interactions. Whether critiqued or celebrated, Greene's work undeniably challenges readers to think critically about power, influence, and the intricacies of the human experience.

7- Book Club Questions

How did the book challenge your ethical boundaries? Were there specific laws or examples that made you uncomfortable?

Which historical examples stood out to you the most? How did they enhance your understanding of the laws of power?

In what ways do you see the principles being applicable to modern-day situations?

What do you think Robert Greene's intentions were in writing this book? Do you believe he meant for readers to apply these laws directly?

Did reading the book change the way you approach strategic thinking in your own life?

How do you respond to criticisms about the book promoting manipulative behavior? Do you think the book encourages unethical actions?

Which of the 48 laws resonated with you personally, and why? Can you think of a personal or historical example where you've seen this law in action?

Are there alternative perspectives missing from the book? How might a different author approach the subject of power dynamics?

Can you think of characters who embody the principles outlined in the book? How do their actions align with or deviate from the laws of power?

Do you think the principles outlined in the book have a lasting impact on those who apply them? How might these principles affect long-term relationships and success?

8- Reading Plan

Number of pages, how long it would take to read.

Approximately 10 hours

Reading plan (1 week)

The reading plan can be adapted based on your reading speed and the time you have available. Here's a suggested plan:

Day 1-2: Read the introduction and the first 100 pages (Laws 1-8).

Day 3-4: Read the next 100 pages (Laws 9-16).

Day 5-7: Take a break or catch up if needed.

Day 8-10: Read the next 100 pages (Laws 17-24).

Day 11-14: Read the next 100 pages (Laws 25-32).

Day 15-16: Take a break or catch up if needed.

Day 17-19: Read the next 80 pages (Laws 33-40).

Day 20-22: Read the next 80 pages (Laws 41-48) and the conclusion.

Day 23-24: Take a break or catch up if needed.

Day 25-28: Use these days to review specific laws, jot down notes, or revisit sections that were particularly impactful or challenging.

9- Facts & Curiosities

- Inspirations from Historical Figures:

Robert Greene drew inspiration from historical figures such as Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and other strategists when crafting the laws presented in the book

- Research Process:

Greene spent years researching and studying historical events and biographies to distill the principles of power outlined in the book.

- The 49th Law:

While the book is titled "The 48 Laws of Power," some readers humorously refer to the unspoken 49th law as "Never Reveal All Your Secrets," suggesting that Greene may be holding back some strategies.

- Controversial Reputation:

The book has been both praised and criticized for its unapologetic exploration of manipulative strategies. Some see it as a guide to understanding the dynamics of power, while others condemn it for promoting unethical behavior.

- Sequel and Companion Books:

Robert Greene has authored several other books exploring similar themes, including "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "Mastery," creating a collection that delves into various aspects of human behavior and achievement.

- Influence on Pop Culture:

The book has been referenced and quoted in numerous movies, TV shows, and songs, indicating its enduring influence on popular culture.

- Global Readership:

"The 48 Laws of Power" has been translated into multiple languages, reflecting its global appeal and readership.

- Interviews and Lectures:

Robert Greene frequently gives interviews and lectures, sharing insights from his books and discussing the application of strategic principles in different aspects of life.

- Application in Business and Leadership:

Many business leaders and executives have found value in the book's principles, incorporating them into their leadership strategies and decision-making processes.

Quotes of "The 18 Laws of Power"

"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."

"Conceal your intentions. ... By concealing the extent of your power, you ensure its effectiveness."

"Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability."

"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."

"The greatest danger you face is your mind growing soft and your eye getting dull. Be as vigilant in your reading as you are in your actions."

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

What is "The 48 Laws of Power" about?

"The 48 Laws of Power" is a book by Robert Greene that explores the dynamics of power and influence. It presents 48 laws or principles drawn from historical examples, offering insights into navigating various social and professional situations.

Is this book a self-help guide?

While the book contains advice on navigating social dynamics, it is not a traditional self-help guide. It delves into the darker aspects of power, strategy, and human behavior, offering both cautionary tales and practical advice.

Is the book "The 48 Laws of Power" Manipulative?

"The 48 Laws of Power" is often perceived as advocating manipulative strategies, as it explores historical examples of individuals using various tactics to gain and maintain power. However, the book encourages readers to approach its content critically and does not explicitly endorse manipulative behavior without considering ethical implications. The interpretation and application of the principles presented in the book depend on the reader's discretion.

How should I approach reading this book?

A: Approach the book with an open mind and critical thinking. Consider it a study of historical examples and strategies rather than a strict guide to be followed. Reflect on the principles presented and evaluate their ethical implications.

Are the laws presented in the book meant to be applied literally?

The laws are presented as strategic principles derived from historical events. Readers can choose to interpret them metaphorically or apply them cautiously in their own lives. It's essential to exercise discretion and consider the ethical implications of each law.

Is "The 48 Laws of Power" suitable for everyone?

The book may not be suitable for readers who are uncomfortable with the exploration of manipulative or strategic behavior. It is recommended for those interested in understanding the complexities of power dynamics, strategy, and historical examples.

Does the book promote unethical behavior?

The book has faced criticism for potentially endorsing manipulative behavior. However, Robert Greene intends for readers to approach the content critically and use it as a tool for understanding power dynamics rather than promoting unethical actions.

Can the principles in the book be applied in the modern world?

Many readers find the principles applicable to various aspects of modern life, including business, relationships, and personal development. However, the application should be done judiciously, considering the specific context and ethical considerations.

Are there real-life examples of people applying these laws successfully?

The book includes historical examples to illustrate each law. While there may be instances of individuals applying similar principles successfully, it's crucial to recognize that circumstances vary, and the laws may not guarantee success in every situation.

Are there similar books by the author?

Yes, Robert Greene has authored several other books exploring themes related to power, strategy, and human behavior. Some of his other notable works include "The Art of Seduction," "The 33 Strategies of War," and "Mastery."

11- Books Related

If you're interested in books related to "the 48 laws of power" that explore similar themes of strategy, power dynamics, and human behavior, here are a few recommendations:, 1. "the art of war" by sun tzu:.

A classic work on military strategy that delves into the principles of warfare, tactics, and strategic thinking. Many of its lessons are applicable to broader aspects of life.

2. "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert B. Cialdini:

Cialdini explores the principles of influence and persuasion, examining the psychology behind why people say "yes" and providing practical insights for effective communication.

3; "Leadership in War" by Andrew Roberts:

This book examines the leadership styles of various historical figures during times of war, providing lessons on effective leadership and decision-making.

4. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen R. Covey:

Covey's classic book focuses on personal development and effectiveness, offering principles for achieving success and building meaningful relationships.

5. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman:

Kahneman, a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist, explores the two systems of thinking that influence decision-making, shedding light on human behavior and judgment.

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A Review of 48 Laws of Power: Is it Worth the Read?

Are you interested in diving into the depths of power and influence? In Robert Greene’s iconic book, The 48 Laws of Power, readers uncover a no-nonsense compilation of laws that serve as valuable tools to help identify and exploit power dynamics. Through witty stories sprinkled throughout history and practical advice on dealing with people through understanding how they wield their power ambitions, this philosophical guide aims to offer insight into the “unspoken laws” of self-empowerment. But is 48 Laws worth your read? Is it still relevant today? Keep reading to find out what I thought after putting this classic work under my own microscope!

Table of Contents

Overview of 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

If you’re looking to dip your toes into the world of power dynamics and human behaviour, then Robert Greene’s “48 Laws of Power” is the perfect place to start. This book spares no expense in offering a glimpse into the cunning and often ruthless tactics employed by the most successful people in history. But don’t let that scare you away, dear reader. While some of the laws may seem manipulative or even unethical, they are presented in a way that allows you to see the psychology behind them. It’s like peeking behind the curtain and seeing the wizard at work. So grab a copy, settle in, and prepare to have your mind blown (and maybe even a little bit frightened) by the machinations of power.

Exploring the Different Laws in The 48 Laws Of Power, and How They Apply to Modern Life

The 48 Laws of Power may have been written centuries ago, but the lessons within its pages are still relevant to modern life. From “Never Outshine the Master” to “Law 48: Assume Formlessness,” each law offers insights on how to navigate the complex world of power dynamics. As someone who has personally applied these laws in my own life, I can attest to their effectiveness. But don’t let the title scare you away – this book isn’t just for those seeking power at all costs. It’s for anyone who wants to better understand the dynamics of human relationships, whether in personal or professional settings. So go ahead, read the book and see how the laws can help you wield power with finesse and grace.

What The 48 Laws Of Power Can Teach You About Gaining and Managing Power

We all want it: power. Whether it’s gaining it or managing it, there’s something inherently enticing about having control. Enter The 48 Laws of Power, a book that’s been making the rounds amongst businesspeople and entrepreneurs alike for years. Some may call it manipulative, but I call it insightful. With chapter titles like “Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions” and “Law 11: Learn to Keep People Dependent on You,” it’s clear that author Robert Greene is all about playing the long game when it comes to power. And hey, in a world where everyone’s vying for control, it never hurts to have a few tricks up your sleeve.

Analysing the Pros and Cons of Reading 48 Laws of Power

If you’re looking for a book that will challenge your worldview and make you question everything you know about power dynamics, then look no further than “48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene. But beware, this book is not for the faint of heart. It’s a collection of Machiavellian tactics and strategies used by historical figures, recounted in a blunt and unapologetic tone. On the one hand, it’s a fascinating study of human nature and the lengths people will go to seize and maintain power. On the other hand, it can be a dangerous guidebook for those who seek to manipulate and deceive others. So, while I highly recommend “48 Laws of Power” for its insights and entertainment value, I also advise readers to approach it with caution and a healthy dose of skepticism.

Examining the Unconventional Wisdom Offered in the Book The 48 Laws Of Power

Let’s talk about The 48 Laws of Power. If you haven’t picked up this book yet, you’re missing out on some juicy, unconventional wisdom. It’s the type of book that’ll give you a surge of confidence, but also leave you feeling a bit uneasy about the world. The author, Robert Greene, breaks down how power dynamics work by examining historical figures and their successes (and failures). Some of the “laws” might seem a bit devious, but they can be useful in certain situations. Overall, it’s worth the read if you’re looking for a fresh perspective on human behaviour and how power really works. Just don’t go using all 48 laws at once, unless you want to end up as a full-blown villain.

My Final Thoughts – Is The 48 Laws Of Power Worth the Read or Not ?

As a self-help junkie, I’ve come across my fair share of books that promise to unlock the secrets to success and power. And let me tell you, not all of them are created equal. But the 48 Laws of Power is one that stands out – for better or for worse. It’s a controversial book, to say the least. Some see it as a manual for manipulation and deceit, while others swear by its teachings. Personally, I think it’s worth the read – but not for the reasons you might think. Sure, the laws themselves can be useful in certain situations. But what’s more valuable is the insight the book gives into human nature and the way power dynamics work. So, my final verdict? Give it a chance, but approach it with a critical eye and a healthy dose of skepticism.

Take A Look At The List Of Laws: The 48 Laws of Power

1. Never Outshine the Master

This law is all about understanding the importance of being aware of your place. Never attempt to outshine or be better than those in positions of power, such as your boss or supervisor. Conceal your talents and abilities as much as possible when in the presence of those in higher positions, because trying to demonstrate that you are smarter can make them feel threatened and inadvertently lead to their resentment.

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

It is vital that we never put too much trust in our friends, as they are often motivated by envy and can betray us. It is far wiser to use enemies for our own advantage. Hiring an enemy can be a very effective tool, as it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty and prove that they can be trusted.

3. Conceal Your Intentions

If you want to succeed in life, it is essential to keep your true intentions hidden. By keeping a veil of secrecy over your ambitions, you can prevent others from seeing your plans and forming a response that could potentially disrupt them. This tactic of concealment is particularly important in competitive environments where opponents may use any insight into your strategies against you.

4. Always Say Less Than Necessary

When it comes to getting ahead in life, the old adage holds true that “less is more”. Speaking less than necessary can be a powerful tool when it comes to achieving success. By being concise and thoughtful with your words, you can convey your points without getting bogged down in unnecessary details or revealing too much information. This allows you to stay focused on your goal while conveying only what is relevant. Additionally, fewer words mean less chance of saying something you may regret, as well as limiting any potential misunderstandings that may arise from a lack of clarity. Finally, by speaking with precision and using language with higher semantic richness, you can create an aura of knowledge and authority that others are naturally drawn to.

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

Reputation is an essential part of acquiring and maintaining power, as Robert Greene accurately states in the fifth law of power. Without a strong reputation, you will find it nearly impossible to get people to follow you and respect your decisions. As such, protecting your own reputation should be taken with utmost seriousness, as if it were your own life. You must consider all consequences of your actions or words carefully before doing anything that could compromise your good name. Additionally, any opportunity to damage the reputations of those who oppose you should be taken advantage of; much can be achieved by destroying someone’s standing in their social circle or professional realm. By safeguarding and exploiting your own and others’ reputations, you will have a powerful tool in achieving success in any endeavour; in essence, repetitional capital is just as valuable – if not more so – than tangible wealth or resources.

6. Court Attention at All Costs

When it comes to power, courting attention is a must. Drawing the spotlight to yourself is one of the most effective ways of increasing your influence, as it gives you an advantage over those who remain in the shadows.

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

When it comes to wielding power, one of the most important lessons is to delegate tasks to others and let them do the work for you. Utilising the knowledge and wisdom of those around you can be a great asset in achieving success. And even though it may be tempting to take credit for all of your accomplishments, it’s important to recognise the contributions made by those who worked for you. By doing so, not only will you show appreciation for their efforts, but also demonstrate pragmatic leadership skills.

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

When looking to gain power over an opponent, it’s important to make them come to you rather than vice versa. This can be achieved through baiting – setting a trap that is so tempting and desirable that they cannot resist it. Once they are in your grasp, you have the ability to control the situation as you please.

9. Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument

The truth is that words alone cannot fully demonstrate the power of one’s will or the determination to attain their goals. To truly command respect and influence those around you, it is essential to take decisive action. Controlling a situation through physical actions rather than verbal arguments proves your strength and authority in any given context.

10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

If you find yourself surrounded by people who are constantly unhappy and unlucky, it is best to distance yourself from them. This type of negative energy can have a detrimental effect on your life, draining your motivation and forcing you to focus on the bad instead of the good. Instead, seek out positive people who will support and encourage you in achieving your goals.

11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

Make sure those you rely on become dependent on you: give them the opportunity to be successful, but make sure they need your guidance, assistance and advice in order to accomplish their goals. This way, they will always be looking to you for direction and will never consider going against or beyond what you have established.

12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim

Choose selectively when to be honest and generous, as it will disarm those who may suspect your true motives. Robert Greene states that “the essence of deception is distraction” – by performing an honest gesture, you can draw attention away from your devious intentions and carry out what needs to be done unnoticed.

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

When seeking assistance, make sure to outline how the other person stands to gain from helping you; individuals will be more likely to willingly cooperate if they are aware of the advantages they can enjoy thanks to their support.

14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

To gain an advantage over someone, it is wise to pose as a friend while secretly working as a spy; get close enough to learn their secrets and use that information against them when the time is right. Be sure to gather all the facts and details, using higher semantic richness for maximum effect.

15. Crush Your Enemy Totally

When you have the chance, destroy your enemies completely. Show them no mercy, and they’ll be less likely to try to cross you in the future.

16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honour

By using strategic absences, you can create an aura of power and mystique around yourself that will make people respect and honour you more. People tend to appreciate what they miss, so by taking breaks from the spotlight and occasionally leaving them wanting more, you can increase their admiration for you and enhance your reputation.

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

Manipulate those around you by creating an aura of unpredictability; don’t let them be sure of your next move or how you will react to certain situations. By doing so, they will remain in a state of constant anxiety, increasing your power to bend them to your will.

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

By secluding yourself from the outside world, you will be denying yourself access to vital resources and knowledge that could help you anticipate, prepare for, and defend against potential threats. Furthermore, your lack of awareness and understanding of the ever-changing environment around you can leave you exposed to enemies who take advantage of the power imbalance.

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

Before engaging with someone, it is important to research and evaluate who they are and what they represent in order to ensure that you do not offend or run into trouble with the wrong person; this could potentially lead to dire consequences.

20. Do Not Commit to Anyone

It is essential to maintain your independence and avoid committing to anyone else, as this will make you appear invincible and inspire respect from those around you, while also allowing you to focus on your own individual goals and ambitions.

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

By feigning ignorance and appearing less intelligent than your mark, you create a false sense of security while allowing them to underestimate the strategic advantage you possess. This allows you to gain information and make decisions that could prove beneficial without alerting them to your intentions.

22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power

By leveraging the Surrender Tactic, those in positions of relative weakness can use their lack of control to their advantage. By temporarily relinquishing power, they can gain more strategic insight into what moves their opponent may make and plan accordingly. This gives them the opportunity to reassert power once they have the leverage and resources necessary to do so.

23. Concentrate Your Forces

Focus your time, energy and resources on a single goal at once; this will increase the chances of achieving success while ensuring that nothing goes to waste.

24. Play the Perfect Courtier

Be the ideal courtier – always strive to please those in power, while humbly controlling those beneath you; never let them perceive your hidden motives and act with graciousness, charm and eloquence so that they may become enamoured with you.

25. Re-Create Yourself

Stay away from controversial activities and allow others to shoulder the responsibility for them; this will give you the opportunity to preserve your reputation and keep yourself away from any subsequent consequences.

26. Keep Your Hands Clean

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

By leveraging people’s need to be part of something bigger than themselves, you can cultivate an undying devotion among your followers. By providing them with a sense of purpose and identity, you can create a powerful cult-like community that is willing to go to great lengths in support of your cause.

28. Enter Action with Boldness

Act with decisiveness and confidence; embrace risk-taking, as it will demonstrate to others your courage and strength of character, inspiring admiration and respect.

29. Plan All the Way to the End

To truly gain and maintain power, one must plan ahead for the long-term consequences of any action taken; this requires comprehensive assessment of potential outcomes and preparation for them in advance to ensure that all bases are covered.

30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

An effective way to appear more talented than you are is to conceal the effort you put into something and make it seem like it came naturally – this will not only make your accomplishments appear effortless, but also give them a greater impact.

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

By carefully selecting the options that are presented to others, it is possible to manipulate their decision making process. By presenting only pre-determined choices, one can lead people in a desired direction while making them believe they have arrived at the conclusion independently. This way, individuals remain unaware of the power dynamics at play and are more likely to accept the outcome.

32. Play Into People’s Fantasies

People need to be empowered and made to feel special. Help them do this by building a connection with them so they believe that you understand them better than anyone else. This will make them more likely to accept your guidance and be devoted to your cause.

33. Discover Each Person’s Thumbscrew

Everyone has a unique motivation or weakness that can be used against them to manipulate their decisions. People tend to become overwhelmed and distracted when faced with something they care deeply about, thus making it easier for someone else to gain power over them.

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

To demonstrate your leadership status, it’s essential to present yourself with poise and confidence. People will be more likely to follow your direction if they recognise you as an authority figure with high status.

35. Master the Art of Timing

Know the best moment to act by studying the situation and recognising potential opportunities. Timing is critical to maximising your influence and achieving success, so be sure to carefully consider when to make your move.

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

It’s important to remember the Law of Disdain: don’t waste your energy on something you cannot obtain. Instead, demonstrate your strength and power by demonstrating a lack of attachment to something you desire. This attitude reinforces your status and builds confidence.

37. Create Compelling Spectacles

Creating remarkable spectacles will always have a lasting impact on your audience. By carefully crafting a show that is grand and extravagantly designed, you can command attention and influence the behaviour of those present in any situation.

38. Think as You Like But Behave Like Others

No matter your beliefs, understand that it is wise to act in a way that is expected and accepted by the majority. This will give you a greater ability to influence those around you, as they will view you as being just like them and thus more easily influenced.

39. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish

By stirring up waters, one can increase their chances of success. This is done by creating chaos, giving people a distraction from one’s own plans and activities, allowing them to take advantage of the confusion and grab the opportunities that arise.

40. Despise the Free Lunch

Never accept something for free, as it implies that someone has power over you. Show that you are in control and don’t be taken advantage of by refusing to take the ‘free lunch’–be it money , favors, or any other form of compensation.

41. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes

Don’t attempt to take on the mantle of someone more powerful than you; you will never be able to fully meet their expectations, and people will inevitably doubt your legitimacy. Instead, forge your own path to power by carefully considering the choices you make and pursuing your goals with unwavering determination.

42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep will Scatter

By eliminating a leader of a group, it can cause disarray and confusion amongst its members. This allows for the power to be redistributed to those who have taken out the leader, enabling them to gain greater control over the situation. Furthermore, without a leader to guide the group, its followers are more likely to scatter and become vulnerable targets for those with an agenda of power.

43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

To achieve your goals, it is essential to cultivate relationships with others and gain their trust. By doing so, you can form an emotional connection and influence their opinions, allowing you to shape their behavior and decisions.

44. Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect

The Mirror Effect is a powerful tool employed to disarm and enrage an opponent. By reflecting their own negative qualities back onto them, you can strip away their sense of power and control, leading them to become filled with indignation and rage.

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

In order to successfully implement lasting change, it is important to remember that people are naturally resistant to rapid or sweeping reforms. Consequently, it is best to start by clearly communicating the need for change and then gradually introduce smaller modifications over time. By taking this more incremental approach, you will be able to ensure acceptance of the reforms without provoking an overwhelming backlash.

46. Never Appear Too Perfect

If you come across as too perfect, it can be intimidating to others and they may not be so willing to accept your authority or follow your lead. By showing that you have flaws and weaknesses, it reinforces their impression that you are just like them and establishes trust. Being vulnerable can also encourage others to open up and share their own experiences in order to help find a solution. Attempting to appear too perfect is often viewed negatively, since it can seem like an attempt at controlling the situation or people around you. People admire those who can admit their mistakes, learn from them and move on—this illustrates strength of character more than always seeming perfect on the surface. The key is to present yourself in a confident yet humble way—not too perfect, but certainly capable and reliable.

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

When it comes to achieving success and obtaining power, it is important to recognize when enough is enough. Going beyond the initial mark that you have set for yourself can often be seen as a sign of arrogance and greed, thus alienating potential allies and garnering resentment from others. Knowing when to stop will not only benefit your reputation but will also help you maintain control over your resources. It is far easier to hold on to what you have than having to try reclaim what has been lost after striving too hard for too much. Therefore, take stock of the situation and understand that sometimes, less really is more – in victory, learn when to stop!

48. Assume Formlessness

The ability to assume formlessness is an effective tool of power. When people are unable to predict your behaviour or see a clear pattern in your actions, they have to expend more energy trying to control you. This is particularly useful when engaging in power struggles with other individuals, as it gives you the upper hand by making it harder for them to gain leverage over you. By avoiding consistency and maintaining flexibility, you can create an environment of uncertainty that makes it difficult for them to plan their next move.

How can one use the 48 Laws of Power to gain influence and power?

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene is a powerful tool for gaining influence and power. The laws provide guidance on how to acquire and maintain control in any situation, from the boardroom to everyday life. The principles in the book stress being aware of people’s nature, building connections with others, reigning over feelings and exploiting techniques such as flattery or trickery if required. By applying these laws strategically, individuals can gain an advantage over their competition while maintaining integrity at all times.

What is the importance of understanding the consequences outlined in each law from The 48 Laws of Power?

The 48 Laws of Power provide an important framework for understanding the consequences of our actions. By being aware of the potential repercussions, we can make more informed decisions and be better prepared to handle any challenges that may arise. Anticipating issues before they occur can give us a strategic edge, enabling us to act decisively and with assurance in order to realize our objectives. Ultimately, mastering The 48 Laws of Power provides invaluable insight into how power works in all aspects of life – from business dealings to interpersonal relationships.

How does mastering The 48 Laws of Power help one become successful in life?

Mastering The 48 Laws of Power can help one become successful in life by teaching them the fundamentals of power, influence, and persuasion. It provides an understanding of how to use these tools to gain control over any situation or relationship. These laws provide insight into human behavior so that one can effectively navigate their way through difficult conversations and circumstances with ease. Additionally, honing these regulations can boost one’s assurance as it educates them to identify when they are being taken advantage of or controlled while furnishing them with the capabilities essential for making powerful choices that will drive them towards triumph.

In what ways can an individual apply The 48 Laws of Power to their own personal development journey?

The 48 Laws of Power provide a comprehensive framework for personal development. From the law of power itself, to the laws of timing and strategy, each law can be applied to an individual’s journey towards self-improvement. For example, understanding the concept that “power is never given; it must be taken” encourages individuals to take initiative in their own lives and strive for success. The laws also emphasise being mindful of one’s environment when making decisions or taking action – recognising opportunities as they arise and adapting quickly accordingly. Ultimately, by utilising these concepts consistently, individuals can gain understanding into the most effective way to approach their own life journeys with trust and lucidity.

The 48 Laws of Power may seem old-fashioned or outdated at first glance, but they contain a great deal of powerful wisdom that is still relevant today. Yes, it might be seen as manipulative and underhanded advice – but this book can offer insight into obtaining and managing power in creative ways, if viewed with an open mind. Whether you are looking to seize control of your life or simply expand your understanding of how power works, Greene’s classic book is worth the read. The tips and tricks offered in these pages are intriguingly unconventional, enlightening and downright wise – though sometimes it appears to fly in the face of our moral compass. To gain greater insight into the psychology behind acquiring and keeping power in our ever more chaotic world, I definitely recommend reading 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88146-5

Page Count: 430

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION | PSYCHOLOGY | HISTORICAL & MILITARY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Robert Greene

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BOOK TO SCREEN

by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006

The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...

Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.

He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.

Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006

ISBN: 0374500010

Page Count: 120

Publisher: Hill & Wang

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | HOLOCAUST | HISTORY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL HISTORY

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by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen

by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal

by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

From mean streets to wall street.

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

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The 48 Laws of Power: Summary Review & Takeaways

This is a summary review of The 48 Laws of Power containing key details about the book.

What is The 48 Laws of Power About?

Drawn from 3,000 years of the history of power, The 48 Laws of Power is a guide to help readers achieve for themselves what many powerful leaders learned the hard way. The 48 laws are illustrated through the tactics, triumphs and failures of great figures from the past who have wielded - or been victimised by power.

Who is the Author of The 48 Laws of Power?

Robert Greene is an American author of books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature.

What are key takeaways from The 48 Laws of Power?

Understand power, learn how to defend against it, and learn how to use it to get what you want.

Powerful people like to be the center of attention so in order to impress them you shouldn't outshine them as this will make them feel threatened instead, you should ensure you shine the light on them to make them look better and smarter than everyone one, including yourself.

To become powerful you will likely have to use other people's work to your advantage. Stealing is a strong word to use but if you have ever plagiarized someone's work or copied an answer know that you're not alone as even Thomas Edison used employee Nikola Tesla's work to further his breakthrough of the dynamo, claiming Tesla's hard work as his own. This is why it's so vital for you to claim credit for your work, whether you've invented something, written a book, or written a speech – claim your idea or work before someone else does!

When struggling to outsmart your competition, gather as much information as you can about the company or individual. You'll need to befriend the enemy in order to outpower them, this way you can discover their weaknesses, plans, and desires whilst, in time, influencing their decisions. Hiring informants is one way to gather information but is risky – how will you know if they're a double agent and that the information is reliable? Therefore, it's better to be your own spy. If the tables are turned (and you should presume they are!) you can act unpredictably to gain the edge over your competitor, this will leave them confused and floundering far behind as they try to work out what you're up to whilst you steam ahead.

When faced with an opponent that you know is stronger than you, it's ok to surrender as you will be able to gain power later - Avoid fighting for the glory when you know you don't have a hope of coming out on top and your competitor knows it too. By surrendering this time, you're not giving up altogether – use this opportunity to regroup so you come back fighting stronger next time.

To be treated superiorly you need to act more superior than your colleagues, however, by doing this you'll breed contempt in them. Therefore, you need to get people to treat you like royalty – don't let them see you acting superiorly, be superior so that they assume there's good reason for you to be treated so!

Seduction is always better than using force and coercion when gaining power over others. Even though force can often be the easier option, it breeds resistance in people as they being to resent you. Seduction on the other hand, allows you to control people by playing on their emotions, people will become indebted to you when you treat them well and will ultimately 'jump' as soon as you say the word!

Book details

Print length: 452 Pages
Audiobook: 23 hrs and 6 mins
Genre: Nonfiction, Psychology, Business, Self Help, Philosophy, Politics, Social Sciences

What are the chapters in The 48 Laws of Power?

Chapter One - Law 1 - Never Outshine the Master Chapter Two - Law 2 - Never Put Too Much Trust In Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies Chapter Three - Law 3 - Conceal YOur Intentions Chapter Four - Law 4 - Always Say Less Than Necessary Chapter Five - Law 5 - So Much Depends on Reputation - Guard It with Your Life Chapter Six - Law 6 - Court Attention at All Cost Chapter Seven - Law 7 - Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit Chapter Eight - Law 8 - Make Other People Come To You - Use Bait if Necessary Chapter Nine - Law 9 - Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument Chapter Ten - Law 10 - Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky Chapter Eleven - Law 11 - Learn to Keep People Dependent on You Chapter Twelve - Law 12 - Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim Chapter Thirteen - Law 13 - When Asking for Help, Appeal to People's Self-Interest, Never to Their Chapter Fourteen - Law 14 - Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy Chapter Fifteen - Law 15 - Crush Your Enemy Totally Chapter Sixteen - Law 16 - Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor Chapter Seventeen - Law 17 - Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability Chapter Eighteen - Law 18 - Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself - Isolation is Dangerous Chapter Nineteen - Law 19 - Know Who You're Dealing With - DO Not Offend the Wrong Person Chapter Twenty - Law 20 - DO Not Commit to Anyone Chapter Twenty-One - Law 21 - Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker - Seem Dumber Thank Your Mark Chapter Twenty-Two - Law 22 - Use the Surrender Tactic - Transform Weaknesses Into Power Chapter Twenty-Three - Law 23 - Concentrate Your Forces Chapter Twenty-Four - Law 24 - Play the Perfect Courtier Chapter Twenty-Five - Law 25 - Re-Create Yourself Chapter Twenty-Six - Law 26 - Keep Your Hands Clean Chapter Twenty-Seven - Law 27 - Play on People's Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following Chapter Twenty-Eight - Law 28 - Enter Action with Boldness Chapter Twenty-Nine - Law 29 - Plan All the Way to the End Chapter Thirty - Law 30 - Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless Chapter Thirty-One - Law 31 - Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal Chapter Thirty-Two - Law 32 - Play to People's Fantasies Chapter Thirty-Three - Law 33 - Discover Each Man's Thumbscrew Chapter Thirty-Four - Law 34 - Be Royal In Your Own Fashion: Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One Chapter Thirty-Five - Law 35 - Master the Art of Timing Chapter Thirty-Six - Law 36 - Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge Chapter Thirty-Seven - Law 37 - Create Compelling Spectacles Chapter Thirty-Eight - Law 38 - Think as You Like But Behave Like Others Chapter Thirty-Nine - Law 39 - Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish Chapter Forty - Law 40 - Despise the Free Lunch Chapter Forty-One - Law 41 - Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man's Shoes Chapter Forty-Two - Law 42 - Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter Chapter Forty-Three - Law 43 - Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others Chapter Forty-Four - Law 44 - Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect Chapter Forty-Five - Law 45 - Preach the Need for Change, But Never Reform Too Much at Once Chapter Forty-Six - Law 46 - Never Appear Too Perfect Chapter Forty-Seven - Law 47 - Do Not Go Past the Mark You Aimed for: In Victory, Learn When to Stop Chapter Forty-Eight - Law 48 - Assume Formlessness

What are some of the main summary points from the book?

Here are some key summary points from the book:

The 48 Laws of Power Summary Notes

Here are a few summary notes from the book:

Chapter One Summary - Law 1 - Never Outshine the Master

Synopsis: Law 1 highlights the importance of managing perceptions and maintaining a sense of modesty in the presence of those in power. Individuals must be strategic in showcasing their abilities and accomplishments to avoid challenging their superiors' authority. Ultimately, this law serves as a reminder to prioritize managing relationships with those in positions of power, as these relationships can often determine one's success or downfall.

Summary: The first topic in Robert Greene's book "The 48 Laws of Power" is Law 1 - Never Outshine the Master. This law advises individuals to avoid appearing more successful, talented, or powerful than their superiors. The main theme of this chapter is the importance of managing perceptions and maintaining a sense of modesty in the presence of those who hold power over you.

Greene asserts that those who outshine their masters risk becoming targets of envy and resentment, which can lead to their downfall. He explains that superiors may perceive their subordinates' accomplishments as a challenge to their own status and authority. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that your actions do not threaten the ego of those in power.

There are several tactics to implement this law, such as allowing your superior to take credit for your accomplishments and avoiding showing off your abilities in a way that threatens their position. Additionally, it is important to ensure that your work reflects positively on your boss and that they receive recognition for your achievements.

However, it is also essential to note that this law does not mean that individuals should stifle their talents or hide their abilities. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of being strategic in how you showcase your skills and accomplishments. By maintaining a sense of modesty and not overtly threatening the authority of your superiors, individuals can navigate their way to success while avoiding any potential backlash.

Chapter Two Summary - Law 2 - Never Put Too Much Trust In Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies

Synopsis: Law 2 highlights the importance of maintaining a healthy level of skepticism and caution in our relationships. By learning how to use our enemies to our advantage, we can gain valuable insights and drive, while also avoiding the potential pitfalls of trusting too much in our friends.

Summary: According to Greene, friends have the potential to betray you in ways that enemies never could. Friends can become envious of your success and harbor resentment towards you. They may also become complacent and comfortable in their position as your friend, taking advantage of your trust and support. On the other hand, enemies are often more honest with their intentions and are easier to predict. They can be a valuable source of information, as they have a vested interest in keeping tabs on you.

Greene argues that it is important to maintain a healthy level of skepticism and caution when it comes to trusting friends. Instead, he suggests that we should learn to use our enemies to our advantage. This can be done by studying them and understanding their motivations, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. By doing so, we can gain insight into their plans and potentially turn their actions to our benefit.

Furthermore, by having enemies, we can create a sense of opposition and drive within ourselves. It can be motivating to have someone to compete against and to use their negative energy as fuel to accomplish our goals. Additionally, having enemies can serve as a way to build alliances and support from others who are opposed to our common enemy.

It is important to note that this law does not suggest that we should actively seek out enemies or be hostile towards our friends. Rather, it is about recognizing the potential dangers of placing too much trust in others and being mindful of our relationships with those around us.

Chapter Three Summary - Law 3 - Conceal Your Intentions

Synopsis: The main theme of Law 3 is the importance of keeping one's plans and goals hidden to avoid giving others an advantage and to protect one's interests. By concealing intentions, one can maintain an air of mystery, protect their reputation, and increase their chances of success.

Summary: When people know your intentions, they can use that information to their advantage, often by working against you or using it as leverage. Therefore, it is essential to keep your goals and plans to yourself and reveal them only when necessary.

One example of concealing intentions is seen in poker games. A skilled poker player never truly reveals their intentions, as it gives the other players an advantage. Similarly, in business, politics, and personal relationships, it's crucial to keep one's plans and intentions fairly hidden to avoid giving others leverage.

While outright lying may not be necessary, it's essential to use vague language, change the subject, or give false impressions to keep others from knowing your true intentions. However, it's crucial to be careful with deception, as it can backfire and damage your reputation. You want to use deception sparingly and only when necessary to protect your interests.

In addition to the benefits of concealing intentions, there are potential downsides of being too open with your goals and plans. For example, if your intentions are too clear, others may view you as a threat and work to undermine you. Additionally, if you reveal your goals too soon, you may become complacent and lose the motivation to achieve them.

Chapter Four Summary - Law 4 - Always Say Less Than Necessary

Synopsis: Law 4 of "The 48 Laws of Power" is a reminder that words are powerful tools that should be used judiciously. By learning to say less than necessary, one can avoid the pitfalls of careless speech and maintain control over any situation. It is a lesson that can be applied in all aspects of life, from personal relationships to professional interactions, and can lead to greater power.

Summary: The art of effective communication is not just about expressing oneself but also about knowing when and how much to speak. The fourth law from Robert Greene's book "The 48 Laws of Power" emphasizes the importance of controlling one's words and limiting them to only what is necessary.

The main theme of this law is that words can be powerful tools but they can also be one's downfall if used carelessly. In any conversation, there is always the risk of saying too much or revealing more than intended, which can have dire consequences. By learning to say less than necessary, one can avoid these pitfalls and maintain a sense of control over the situation.

The chapter explores various aspects of this law, including the value of silence and the dangers of oversharing. It emphasizes that words are not only used to convey information but can also be used to manipulate and deceive others. Therefore, it is essential to be mindful of what is said and to whom it is said.

One of the key takeaways from this law is the importance of listening more than speaking. By actively listening to others, one can gain valuable insights into their thoughts and intentions. This allows one to tailor their words to the situation and to avoid saying anything that may be misinterpreted or misunderstood.

Another aspect of this law is the idea of creating an air of mystery. By saying less than necessary, one can create a sense of intrigue and curiosity that can be used to one's advantage. This can be particularly useful in situations where one is trying to gain the upper hand, such as in negotiations or when dealing with rivals.

Chapter Five Summary - Law 5 - So Much Depends on Reputation - Guard It with Your Life

Synopsis: Law 5 emphasizes the importance of reputation in our personal and professional lives and encourages us to be vigilant in protecting it. By cultivating positive relationships, being mindful of our actions and words, and responding effectively to any negative rumors or misinformation, we can guard our reputation and increase our chances of success in all areas of life.

Summary: Reputation is the way that others perceive us, and it can have a significant impact on our lives, both personally and professionally. A positive reputation can open doors, create opportunities, and help us gain the trust and respect of others. Conversely, a negative reputation can limit our options, damage relationships, and hinder our ability to achieve our goals.

Guarding our reputation requires a combination of vigilance and strategic thinking. This means being mindful of the impression we make on others, cultivating positive relationships, and avoiding behaviors that could tarnish our reputation.

One of the key strategies for guarding our reputation is to always be aware of how our actions and words may be perceived by others. This requires a certain level of self-awareness and emotional intelligence, as well as the ability to read and understand the motivations of others. We must also be willing to adapt our behavior to different social situations and cultural contexts, so that we can build strong relationships and avoid making missteps that could harm our reputation.

Another important aspect of guarding our reputation is the ability to differentiate between rumors and facts. In today's digital age, information spreads quickly and can be difficult to control. False or misleading information can damage our reputation and spread rapidly, so it's important to be proactive in correcting any misinformation that may be circulating.

Chapter Six Summary - Law 6 - Court Attention at All Cost

Synopsis: The main theme of this law is the importance of capturing people's attention and making oneself stand out in order to gain power and influence. While this may involve taking risks and being bold, it is also important to strike a balance and avoid appearing desperate or attention-seeking. By mastering the art of attention-grabbing, you can increase your ability to influence

Summary: As you probably noticed it yourself, people are naturally drawn to those who stand out and make an impression. In order to court attention, one must be willing to take risks and be bold in their actions.

There are numerous examples of individuals who successfully courted attention and became powerful as a result. One such example is Salvador Dali, who made a name for himself in the art world by creating outlandish and provocative works that were unlike anything else at the time. He knew how to capture people's attention and keep them interested in his work, which ultimately led to his success.

Another example is P.T. Barnum, the famous showman who created the "Greatest Show on Earth." Barnum was a master of self-promotion and knew how to generate buzz around his shows. He used a variety of tactics to court attention, including creating bizarre and exotic exhibits, staging stunts, and even hiring people to spread rumors about his shows.

While the idea of courting attention may seem like a selfish pursuit, it is actually a necessary part of gaining power and influence. By capturing people's attention, one can gain a following, attract supporters, etc.

However, as you can imagine, there is a fine line between courting attention and coming across as desperate or attention-seeking or even narcissistic. It is important to strike a balance between being bold and confident without appearing arrogant or obnoxious.

Chapter Seven Summary - Law 7 - Get Others to Do the Work for You, But Always Take the Credit

Synopsis: Law 7 is all about recognizing the value of delegation and using it strategically to achieve your own goals. It's a delicate balance that requires subtlety and strategic thinking. By understanding this law and implementing it effectively, you can climb the ladder of success and achieve your goals.

Summary: The key to implementing this law is to understand that most people are looking for validation and recognition for their work. They want to feel important and valued for what they do. By taking credit for their work, you are essentially giving them what they want while also achieving your own goals.

However, it's important to do this in a subtle and strategic way. You don't want to blatantly steal credit from someone, as this can create resentment and damage relationships. Instead, you want to position yourself in a way that makes it seem like you were an integral part of the project's success, without necessarily taking away from the contributions of others.

One way to do this is to be the one who is responsible for coordinating the project and delegating tasks. By doing this, you can ensure that everyone is doing their job effectively, while also keeping track of the progress of the project. This puts you in a position to take credit for the overall success of the project.

Another strategy is to be the one who communicates the progress and success of the project to others. By doing this, you can be seen as the face of the project, even if you weren't the one who did all the work. This can help you gain recognition and respect from those who are higher up in the company or organization.

It's important to note that this law isn't about taking advantage of others or being deceitful. It's about recognizing the value of delegation and understanding how to use it to your advantage. It's also important to remember that you should never steal credit for someone else's work. This can damage your reputation and credibility.

Chapter Eight Summary - Law 8 - Make Other People Come To You - Use Bait if Necessary

Synopsis: The main theme of Law 8 is that by making others come to you, you can gain power and influence in your personal and professional life. This can be achieved by cultivating a reputation for being valuable, strategically revealing your skills and resources, using bait to create a sense of demand, and creating an environment that others want to be a part of. By doing so, you can become a person of influence who others seek out, rather than someone who is constantly chasing after others.

Summary: The law emphasizes the importance of being seen as a person of value who has something others want. The more you can cultivate a reputation for being valuable, the more people will seek you out. This can be achieved by mastering a particular skill, having access to exclusive information, or possessing a desirable resource. However, it is not enough to simply have these things; you must also strategically reveal them to others.

One effective way to make others come to you is to use bait. This involves presenting something to others that they desire, but only giving it to them if they come to you. This can take many forms, such as offering exclusive information, access to important people, or even a physical object. By offering something desirable that others cannot easily obtain, you create a sense of demand for your presence.

Another way to make others come to you is to create an environment that they want to be a part of. This could mean hosting events or gatherings where interesting people will be in attendance or creating a physical space that is inviting and attractive. The key is to create an experience that others want to be a part of, so they will naturally seek you out.

It’s important to note, however, that using bait to make others come to you should not be done in a manipulative or deceptive way. Rather, it should be seen as a way to create mutual benefit. By giving others something they desire, you also gain something in return - their attention, respect, and possibly their loyalty.

Chapter Nine Summary - Law 9 - Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument

Synopsis: Law 9 emphasizes the importance of focusing on actions rather than words to achieve success. By demonstrating one's abilities and avoiding unnecessary conflicts, one can build a reputation based on their strengths and accomplishments. This requires self-reflection, practice, and dedication, as well as an understanding of the context and expectations of others. By following this law, one can become more effective in their endeavors and build stronger relationships based on trust and respect.

Summary: The central idea behind this law is that actions speak louder than words, and one should focus on demonstrating their abilities rather than engaging in arguments or debates. Words can often be misinterpreted, misheard, or forgotten, whereas actions have a lasting impact on others. Therefore, rather than trying to win an argument through persuasive language or logical reasoning, one should demonstrate their abilities and let their actions speak for themselves.

As you know, arguments often become personal and can damage relationships, while actions are seen as objective and can bring people together. By focusing on actions, one can avoid unnecessary conflicts and build a reputation based on their abilities rather than their rhetoric.

To win through actions, one must first identify their strengths and weaknesses and work on improving themselves. It’s also important to understand the context in which one operates and the expectations of others. This involves careful observation and analysis of the situation and the people involved.

Another aspect of this law is to avoid bragging or boasting about one's accomplishments. Instead, one should let their actions speak for themselves and allow others to recognize their achievements. This not only builds credibility but also creates a sense of humility and respect.

Chapter Ten Summary - Law 10 - Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky

Synopsis: The law emphasizes the importance of surrounding yourself with positive and driven individuals while avoiding those who are unhappy and unlucky. Doing so can help you maintain a positive attitude, stay motivated, and achieve your goals without any distractions. By being mindful of who you spend your time with, you can create a supportive environment that fosters growth and success.

Summary: In essence, the law suggests that individuals should surround themselves with those who are positive and driven, as these individuals are more likely to contribute to a person's growth and success.

As you know, the people you surround yourself with can have a significant impact on your life. Being around individuals who are negative, pessimistic, or unmotivated can bring down your power and hinder your success. It’s therefore essential to be cautious about who you spend your time with.

When you surround yourself with people who are ‘unhappy and unlucky’, it can be challenging to maintain a positive attitude and stay motivated. Their outlook can be contagious, leading you to start doubting your abilities and questioning your goals. In contrast, being around lucky and positive people can inspire you to strive for greatness and achieve your goals.

Moreover, unhappy and unlucky people often bring negative energy into any situation, which can lead to conflicts and setbacks. They may bring up problems without offering solutions or act as a burden, draining your energy and distracting you from your goals. By avoiding such individuals, you can focus on your objectives and work towards achieving them without any distractions.

It’s important to note that avoiding unhappy and unlucky individuals does not mean abandoning your friends or family members who may be going through tough times. Instead, it means being mindful of how much time and energy you spend with them and finding some balance.

What is a good quote from The 48 Laws of Power?

― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power Quotes

What do critics say?

Here's what one of the prominent reviewers had to say about the book: "Machiavelli has a new rival. And Sun Tzu had better watch his back. Greene . . . has put together a checklist of ambitious behavior. Just reading the table of contents is enough to stir a little corner-office lust.” — New York magazine

* The summary points above have been concluded from the book and other public sources. The editor of this summary review made every effort to maintain information accuracy, including any published quotes, chapters, or takeaways

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The 48 Laws of Power: A Comprehensive Review

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The 48 Laws of Power is a book written by Robert Greene that has become a classic in the world of business and self-improvement. The book is a comprehensive guide to understanding the strategies and lessons of power and how to apply them in your life. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand power dynamics and how to navigate them.

The 48 Laws of Power: A Comprehensive Overview

The 48 Laws of Power is a book that is divided into 48 chapters, each of which describes a different law of power. The book is organized in such a way that each chapter builds on the previous one, creating a comprehensive overview of the strategies and lessons of power.

The laws of power described in the book range from "Never outshine the master" to "Crush your enemy totally." Each law is explained in detail, with examples from history and literature to illustrate the point. The book also includes a section on how to apply the laws of power in your own life.

The 48 Laws of Power is not just a book about how to gain power. It is also a book about how to keep power. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the power dynamics in any situation and using that understanding to your advantage.

Analyzing the Strategies and Lessons of Robert Greene’s Bestseller

The strategies and lessons of power described in The 48 Laws of Power are based on the principles of human nature. The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the motivations and desires of others in order to gain and maintain power.

One of the key lessons of the book is the importance of being aware of your own weaknesses and vulnerabilities. The book emphasizes the importance of being honest with yourself and acknowledging your own limitations.

The 48 Laws of Power is a book that is both practical and philosophical. It is a book that teaches you how to navigate the complex world of power dynamics while also encouraging you to reflect on your own values and beliefs.

Overall, The 48 Laws of Power is a book that is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand power dynamics and how to navigate them. The book is a comprehensive guide to the strategies and lessons of power, and it is a must-read for anyone who wants to succeed in business or in life.

The 48 Laws of Power is a book that has stood the test of time. It is a classic in the world of business and self-improvement, and it continues to be relevant today. Whether you are a business owner, a manager, or just someone who wants to understand power dynamics, The 48 Laws of Power is a book that you should read.

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The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Summary (2024)

Feeling powerless is a miserable experience. If given the choice, everyone would opt for more rather than less power. Yet, to be so overt in attempts to gain power is frowned upon. To attain power, you need to be subtle, cunning, and democratic yet devious. Consequently, in his controversial book, “The 48 Laws of Power,” best-selling author Robert Greene argues that if you manage to seduce, charm, and deceive your opponents, you will attain the ultimate power.

Greene states that the better you become at handing power, the better friend, lover, and person you will become. This is because you learn how to make others feel good about themselves, which makes them dependent on you as a source of great pleasure to be around.

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What Are the 48 Laws of Power?

To Greene, power is amoral. It’s a game. A social game. To master it, you must be able to study and understand people. Yet, you must always take the most indirect route to power. “The 48 Laws of Power” is a handbook in the various arts of indirection.

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Covering a span of more than 3,000 years, “The 48 Laws of Power” includes 48 pieces of wisdom from men and women across a variety of international civilizations that all share a common thread. Greene’s book is a distillation of this accumulated wisdom and a veritable how-to guide on how to become more powerful. It is a priceless source of knowledge for those seeking to get ahead.

The 48 Laws of Power List

“The 48 Laws of Power” is structured as a detailed list that delves into each law in detail. In this “48 Laws of Power” summary, we look at each of the laws in turn and extract the key takeaways for you to consider before making your next move.

The 48 Laws of Power Summary

Law 1. never outshine the master.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. Hide the extent of your own talents, as your masters may otherwise feel insecure. The better you make your master appear, the greater the level of power you will attain. Those above you want to feel secure and superior in their positions. This may involve making a few harmless mistakes so that you can ask your master for help.

If, however, you are more naturally charming than your master, it would be best to avoid working for them entirely.

Law 2. Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies

Friends are more likely to betray you in haste as they are more prone to envy. However, if you hire a former enemy, they will prove themselves more trustworthy, as they have more to prove. Consequently, you have more to fear from friends than your enemies.

Often, you think you know your friends better than you do. This is because honesty rarely strengthens bonds, so friends frequently hide their true feelings about each other. As people want to feel they deserved their good fortune in hiring a friend, they can feel undeserving and, ultimately, resentful. Instead, it’s better to hire an enemy, as your motives are up front and are not clouded with personal feeling.

Law 3. Conceal Your Intentions

Always keep your intentions obscured. This way, your opponents cannot defend themselves. Lead them astray, and by the time they realize your plans, it will be too late. Use humankind’s tendency to trust appearances to your advantage. By dangling a decoy set of intentions in front of your opponents, they will fail to see what you’re really plotting.

By cloaking your intentions, people will believe you to be friendly and honest. This will lead them further down the wrong path. Additionally, by being bland and inconspicuous, people are even less likely to doubt your intentions, as they trust the familiar.

Law 4. Always Say Less Than Necessary

Powerful people know how to impress others by saying less. The more you say, the more likely it is that you will end up saying something foolish. As people are constantly trying to work out what others appear to be thinking, silence makes them feel uncomfortable. By controlling what you reveal, you can wield great power. After all, they are likely to fill in the silences you leave, revealing more information about their own intentions and weaknesses.

Law 5. So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It With Your Life

Your reputation is the cornerstone of your power. You can use it to intimidate and win, but if it becomes tarnished, you open yourself up to being vulnerable to attack. Make your reputation impenetrable, and predict attacks before they occur. Aid yourself in this endeavor by destroying your enemies by exploiting holes in their reputations and letting the public destroy them.

A solid reputation can double your strength and distract potential opponents from discovering what you’re really like. It increases your presence and your strengths without having to expend much energy.

Law 6. Court Attention at All Costs

As everything is judged by appearance, you must stand out. Make yourself appear larger, more interesting, and more mysterious than the masses. One way to do this is to surround your name with sensation and scandal. Bear in mind that notoriety of any sort brings power. It’s preferable to be slandered than to be ignored.

A solid counterbalance to this approach is to create an air of mystery around yourself. Keep your cards close to your chest. People are drawn to those who seem enigmatic. An air of mystery increases your presence and creates anticipation – everyone will be glued to your next move.

Law 7. Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit

Never do for yourself what the efforts of others can do for you. Use their wisdom and knowledge to further your own cause. In doing so, you will appear intimidatingly efficient and knowledgeable. Ultimately, those who worked for you will be forgotten, and you will be remembered.

If you think it’s important that you do all the work yourself, you won’t get far. Consequently, find those with the skills you lack, and find a way to either take their work as your own, or hire them and put your name on their efforts. However, to do this effectively, your position must be secure, as otherwise people will call you out for deception.

Law 8. Make Other People Come to You – Use Bait if Necessary

It’s always preferable to make your opponent come to you, as they will have to abandon their plans and strategies in the process. Lure them in, and then attack. This prevents you from ever reacting to your opponents; instead, they have to react to you. This means playing the long-game, sitting back, and staying calm as others get stuck in the traps you’ve carefully planned out for them.

However, your traps are only as good as the perceived attractiveness of your bait. If your bait is sweet enough, your opponent will become blinded to reality by their emotions, allowing you to gain the upper hand.

Law 9. Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument

Any triumph you gain through argument will be short lived. Resentment will fester in your opponents instead of a genuine change of opinion. Instead, let your actions speak for you. If people agree with you through your actions instead of your words, you are more likely to sway lasting opinions. Words are a dime a dozen, and people will say anything to prove a point. Action is where you demonstrate your beliefs.

Law 10. Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and the Unlucky

Emotional states can be as infectious as diseases. Occasionally, some unfortunate individuals bring their own misfortune upon themselves and can bring you down too if you get too close. Therefore, make sure to associate with the happy and the fortunate.

The incurably unhappy tend to portray themselves as victims, and before you realize they are the cause of their own misfortune, they have infected you with their misery. Who you decide to associate with is critical. Through associating with the miserable, you waste your valuable time and drain your potential power.

Law 11. Learn to Keep People Dependent on You

To maintain independence, you must make others need and want you. The more people rely on you, the more freedom you have. Yet, be wary to never teach those surrounding you with enough information that they can start doing things for themselves. This method is the best way to get people to do what you want without forcing them or inflicting pain on them. Once you have dependents, they are reliant on you, and you can subtly do with them as you wish.

Law 12. Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim

A single honest gesture can help cover the traces of dozens of dishonest acts. By being generous, you can disarm even the most suspicious people. Once they are disarmed, you can manipulate them at will. The key to successful deception is distraction. An act of generosity distracts those you wish to deceive while turning them into docile children, delighted by the affectionate gesture.

Learning to give before you take is a skilled way of getting what you want. Selective honesty also functions as a means to disarm your opponents. However, regaling a single truth will not be enough. You’ll have to construct a facade of honesty built upon a series of acts to gain trust, but these acts can be quite inconsequential.

Law 13. When Asking for Help, Appeal to the Self-interests of Others, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude

If you must ask for help, make sure your request includes a benefit for your ally that you can exaggerate beyond proportion. When your ally sees that there is something in it for them, they are more likely to respond with enthusiasm. Self-interest is the greatest motivator for people. Once you master the art of working out what others want and using it to further your own plans, there will be no limits on what you can accomplish.

Law 14. Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy

Knowledge about your rival is essential. By posing as a friend, you can ask indirect questions and gradually get your opponents to reveal their weaknesses and their intentions. Once you know this information, you can better predict how they are going to move next.

If you don’t want to pose as a friend, get others to spy for you. However, while you gather information, you open yourself up to vulnerabilities by letting other people do your work for you. It’s always better to spy and pose as a friend yourself.

Law 15. Crush Your Enemy Totally

To crush your enemy partially means that they will eventually recover and seek revenge. Ultimately, you can only gain peace and serenity if your enemies cease to exist. If you manage to remove all of your opponent’s options, then they will have no choice but to bend to your will. By giving them nothing to negotiate with and no room to maneuver, you will have crushed them.

Law 16. Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor

The more present you are, the more common you appear. Create an air of scarcity around yourself to increase your perceived value. If you currently exist within an established group, intermittently withdraw so that others talk about you and admire you more.

To do this effectively, you must learn when is the right time to withdraw. In doing so, you force their respect by inadvertently threatening your absence for good. Once you return from your absence, it will appear as if you have been resurrected, and people will be relieved to see you again.

Law 17. Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability

Humans are creatures of habit who look for familiar patterns in the behaviors of others. By acting unpredictably, your opponents will tire themselves out by trying to predict and analyze your moves. This means occasionally striking without warning. When you act predictably, you give others power over you. If you act surprisingly, they will feel that they don’t understand you and will be intimidated.

Similarly, if you find yourself the underdog, using a strategy of unpredictable moves can confuse your enemies into making a tactical blunder.

Law 18. Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous

If you decide to isolate yourself from your enemies and the world at large, you cut yourself off from valuable information. This makes you vulnerable to attack. It’s always better to mingle amongst people, as you are better protected in a crowd. Because humans are social creatures, power comes with social interaction.

Therefore, to become powerful, you must place yourself at the center of things. Activity should revolve around you. Resist the urge to retreat when things feel uncertain. Instead of turning inward, focus on seeking out old allies and forcing yourself into new social circles.

Law 19. Know Who You’re Dealing With – Don’t Offend the Wrong Person

Choose your opponents wisely. There are some people that once defeated, will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. Consequently, it pays to not offend the wrong person. The skill of correctly measuring people is the most important with regard to getting and maintaining power. Be sure to know everything about a person before you work with them.

However, don’t rely on your instincts to get an understanding of a person, and never trust appearances. Watch your target over a long period of time to get a truer picture of their nature.

Law 20. Don’t Commit to Anyone

Make sure the only cause you commit to is yourself. Maintain your independence at all costs. This allows you to play people off against each other. When you hold back from joining a cause, you create a sense of respect because you appear untouchable. You gain a reputation for independence.

Further, do not commit to anyone. Stay out of petty fights and squabbles. Feign interest, but let others do the fighting while you watch and wait. Often, it can be a good tactic to stir up quarrels between two parties and then gain power by acting as the go-between.

Law 21. Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Appear Dumber Than Your Mark

No one enjoys feeling stupid. Consequently, a great trick is to make your opponents feel smarter than you. Once they believe themselves to be more intelligent, they will never suspect that you have any ulterior motives.

Law 22. Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness Into Power

Surrender before you are about to be defeated. This buys you more time to plot your revenge, and to torment your conqueror. By surrendering, you deny them the satisfaction of destroying you. In doing so, you make the act of surrender a tool of power.

By yielding, you gain the upper hand because you lull your opponent into believing they have defeated you, even as you plot their downfall. This confuses your opponents and means they are unlikely to act aggressively against you.

Law 23. Concentrate Your Forces

Conserve your energies by focusing them all into a single source of power. When looking for such a source, identify a single spring that will sustain you for a long time to come. You gain more power by finding a singular rich source than by flitting between many more shallow sources of power.

Power exists in concentrated form. In any organization, power will emanate from a small group of people who are holding all the strings. Consequently, power is like oil, you only need to strike it once to assure yourself a lifetime of wealth and power.

24. Play the Perfect Courtier

The courtier wields power through discrete avenues. By flattering and yielding to their superiors and only enforcing their power through charm and grace, they gradually accumulate an ever-increasing amount of power. There are several steps one can take to become the perfect courtier, and they involve the following:

– Practicing nonchalance

– Being frugal with flattery

– Adapting your style and language according to your audience

– Avoiding being the bearer of bad news

– Never criticizing your superiors

– Being self-observant

– Mastering your emotions

– Being a source of pleasure

25. Recreate Yourself

Do not accept the role that society has given you. Forge your own identity, one that commands attention. Master your image rather than letting others dictate it for you. Remake yourself into a figure of power as if molding yourself from clay.

To do this, you must first be self-aware, and you must learn to master your emotions. Then, you must create a memorable character. From here, you can learn to play many roles to adapt to what any given situation requires of you. However, remember that overacting can be counterproductive.

26. Keep Your Hands Clean

You must maintain a spotless appearance. You should never be associated with nasty deeds. To do this, employ the use of scapegoats to disguise your involvement. Your reputation depends more on what you conceal than what you reveal. You should always have a convenient scapegoat on hand for when needing to conceal your more dubious activities.

In addition to a scapegoat, you will also need a cat’s-paw. This is someone who does your dirty work for you while obscuring your involvement. This means letting someone else be the bearer of bad news while you choose to associate yourself exclusively with the good.

27. Create a Cult-like Following by Playing on People’s Need to Believe

People want to believe in something. By inventing yourself as this cult-like entity, they will follow you and give you untold amounts of power. To become such a figure, you need to follow these steps:

– Keep your words vague and simple but full of promise

– Emphasize enthusiasm rather than the intellectual and the rational

– Structure your group in accordance to the forms of organized religion

– Disguise your sources of income

– Create an us-versus-them dynamic

28. Enter Action With Boldness

Everyone admires the bold. The timid are frowned upon. Consequently, you shouldn’t choose a course of action half-heartedly. Your doubts will become apparent and will tarnish your reputation. It’s always better to act boldly. Any mistakes made are easily compensated by acting even more audaciously.

Few are born bold. It’s a habit that needs to be cultivated. It must be practiced. Likewise, timidity is also a learned trait. If you find yourself acting timidly, you must root this out and replace it with acts of boldness instead.

29. Plan All the Way to the End

Always plan until the end. This means thinking through every possibility that could prevent you from reaching your end goal. Thus, you will be able to accommodate for any surprises along the way and secure your future.

Most people are too trapped by their emotions in the moment to see ahead, so this will give you the upper hand. Plan in detail before you act, and don’t succumb to making any vague plans. Your end goal must always be crystal clear.

30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Make your success seem easy. Conceal all the toil and tricks you used to attain it, as it otherwise arouses too much curiosity in others. Never reveal how you reached your position of power to anyone, or they may use it against you. There are great advantages to remaining silent. The more mysterious your actions appear, the greater your power appears to be. It will make it seem as if you have an exclusive gift that no one can replicate and that knows no limits.

31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play With the Cards You Deal

By giving your opponents a choice, they will feel that they’re controlling their destiny. What they won’t realize is that you’re using them as a puppet to choose between two scenarios, both of which serve you.

When given a choice between two possibilities, people rarely consider all the other potential options that could be on the table. Instead, they blindly choose to believe they have autonomy in their decision-making; too much freedom creates anxiety. By setting up a narrow range of choices, you can guide your opponent to play right into your hands.

32. Play Into People’s Fantasies

As the truth is often ugly, if you appeal to it, you risk being bombarded with the anger of disenchantment. Instead, by tapping into the fantasies of the masses, people will flock to you as you offer an alternative to the disillusionment of reality. By observing which aspects of everyday life are most abhorred, you can conjure up fantasies that promise the opposite of peoples’ current realities and thus wield a phenomenal power.

33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew

Find your opponent’s weakness. This is often an insecurity, an untamed emotion or desire, or sometimes a secret pleasure. To do so, look for the following:

– Instances when they behave like a child, which indicates some unresolved trauma in childhood

– Contrasts, as an overt trait often conceals it opposite (i.e., arrogance is often hiding insecurity)

– The weak link, which is often someone behind the scenes controlling their behavior

– Ways to fill the void of their insecurity or unhappiness to wield significant power

– How to encourage their uncontrollable emotion, as they won’t be able to control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them

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

How you present yourself to the world will reflect how others see and treat you. Carry yourself with self respect, confidence, and dignity to make it seem like you were destined for power. We must make ourselves demand and expect as much as a young child. Believe you are destined for greatness, and this belief will radiate outwards and others will believe it, too. Ask for less, and that is exactly what you’ll get.

35. Master the Art of Timing

Never seem to be in a rush – patience is a virtue. Learn to bide your time, and only strike when the timing is right. As time is a perception, by mastering your emotions, you can make time seem to move more slowly and lengthen your perception of the future. This allows you to become more patient and to see the bigger picture.

36. Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge

The less interest you take in things that irritate you, the more superior you seem. By acknowledging your enemy, you give their existence credibility and, therefore, power. Paradoxically, the more you want something, the more it eludes you as your interest is too strong, which makes others feel uncomfortable and fearful. Occasionally, it’s best just to leave things alone. By turning your back on what you want, you will drive your opponents crazy.

37. Create Compelling Spectacles

By generating grand, spectacular gestures, you will heighten your presence and your power. People will be too dazzled by appearances to uncover what you’re really up to. As opposed to using words, visual gestures contain an emotive power and immediacy that leave no room for doubt. Where words divide, images unite. Use this to your advantage.

38. Think as You Like, but Behave Like Others

By consistently going against the grain in public, people will begin to resent you for making them feel inferior. Practice blending in and hiding your true feelings to nurture the common touch. By doing so, you will be left alone to express your true beliefs in a targeted manner. Once a base of power is established, you can then begin to disseminate your beliefs gradually, and they are more likely to be adopted.

39. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish

If you can stay calm while infuriating your opponents, you can gain an advantage. By finding their weaknesses, you can disturb them and play with them at will. The more angry they become, the more ridiculous they will appear. This will reduce their power.

40. Despise the Free Lunch

Never trust anything that comes for free. Anything of worth is worth paying for. Most things that come for free come with a burdensome psychological price task. By paying, you avoid falling into the trap of having to be grateful, guilty, or deceitful. Further, being lavish with your money is a sign of power. Generosity softens up your opponents into being deceived.

41. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes

What came first always seems more original than what follows. Don’t get lost in the shadows of those that came before you. You must establish your own name and identity by not following the same course of your predecessors.

42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter

All trouble can usually be traced back to one individual. By rooting out this individual and preventing them from operating, you will stop their influence. Don’t waste time, or their influence will multiply. In every group, power is concentrated around one or two people. Consequently, understanding who controls the group is critical. This is made more challenging, as troublemakers prefer to disguise their actions. Isolate their power, however, and they become redundant.

43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

If people feel coerced into acting in a specific way, they will resent you. Instead, you must seduce others so that they act how you want without you having to ask them. By understanding their psychology and their weaknesses, you can play with their emotions and conquer their hearts and minds so that they are loyal to you. By softening them up, you can slowly bend people towards your will without them realizing.

44. Disarm and Infuriate With the Mirror Effect

By mirroring your opponents and doing exactly as they do, you humiliate them and cause them to overreact. By making them believe you share their values, they find it challenging to work out your strategy, as they are blinded by your mirror. You are also able to teach your opponents a lesson by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

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

If you have recently entered a position of power or are an outsider trying to make a claim for it, respect the way people have been living up until this point. Too much change will engender a revolt. To introduce change, make it seem like a gradual and gentle improvement on the past.

46. Never Appear Too Perfect

While appearing superior to others is dangerous, to appear faultless and without weakness is even more perilous. By displaying harmless vices, you prevent envy from developing, and you make yourself appear more approachable. By letting envy fester, it can manifest in a host of problematic ways that will ultimately try to rob you of your power. Stop it in its tracks by making yourself seem powerful but not faultless.

47. Don’t Go Past the Mark You Aimed For: In Victory, Learn When to Stop

Don’t let success go to your head. The moment you achieve victory is often when you’re at your most vulnerable. Don’t get ahead of yourself with your overconfidence and push beyond your initial target. This could create more enemies than you are capable of defeating. There can be no substitute for meticulous strategic planning. Once you reach your goal, stop.

48. Assume Formlessness

By being tangible, you open yourself up to attack. To be malleable, adaptable, and on the move makes you ungraspable. Accept that everything, everywhere changes, and embody this truth. By being as fluid as water, you protect yourself from the ever-shifting nature of reality. By refusing to adapt and to change, you fail to evolve and your power will be usurped. The powerful are constantly adapting, and their power comes from the speed at which they can change.

You can buy “The 48 Laws of Power” by Robert Greene on Amazon .

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48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene: Summary & Notes

Rated : 9/10

Available at: Amazon

ISBN: 0140280197

Related: The 50th Law , The Art of Seduction , Mastery , The 33 Strategies of War

Get access to my collection of 100+ detailed book notes

An outstanding book that will no doubt remain a classic for a long time. 48 Laws of Power details the laws for attaining power in life, business, and more, and gives historical examples of each law in practice, as well as examples of those who do not respect these laws.

A book I will continue to go back and reference. Those who are cynical may see some of the laws as manipulative, and some are. That said, they are all grounded in the reality of human nature, and it's more important to understand them, and then choose how, when, and which to apply, than to just remain ignorant of them and refuse to acknowledge they exist.

A long read, but well worth it and entertaining throughout.

48 Laws of Power

1. never outshine the master..

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and 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.

2. Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.

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.

Friends often conceal things in order to avoid conflict; this can be dangerous.
Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
Whenever you can, bury the hatchet with an enemy, and make a point of putting him in your service.
Use enemies to define your cause more clearly to the public, even framing it as a struggle of good against evil.
It is better off to know who and where your opponents are than to not know where your real enemies lie.

3. Conceal your intentions.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

I: Use decoyed objects of desire and red herrings to throw people off the scent:

If at any point in the deception you practice people have the slightest suspicions to your intentions, all is lost. Do not give them the chance to sense what you are up to: Throw them off the scent by dragging red herrings across the path. Use false sincerity, send ambiguous signals, set up misleading objects of desire. Unable to distinguish the genuine from the false, they cannot pick out your real goal.
Hide your intentions not by closing up, but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals - just false ones.

II: Use smoke screens to disguise your actions:

Deception is always the best strategy, but the best deceptions require a screen of smoke to distract people attention from your real purpose. The bland exterior—like the unreadable poker face—is often the perfect smoke screen, hiding your intentions behind the comfortable and familiar. If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won’t catch on when you lead him into a trap.
A helpful or honest gesture can divert from a deception.
Patterns will also help mask a deception.
Often the key to deception is being bland and acting with humility.

4. Always say less than necessary.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

Silence generally makes people uncomfortable - they will jump in and nervously fill the silence.
Generally saying less makes you appear more profound and mysterious.
Be particularly careful with sarcasm - rarely is it valuable.
Be careful with arousing suspicion or insecurity by being silent. At times it is easier to blend by playing the jester.

5. So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Work to establish a reputation of outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning.
A good reputation can save you much - a lot of work is done in advance by your reputation.
Once established, always take the high road when attacked.

6. Court attention at all cost.

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.

I: Surround your name with the sensational and scandalous

Draw attention to yourself by creating an unforgettable, even controversial image. Court scandal. Do anything to make yourself seem larger than life and shine more brightly than those around you. Make no distinction between kinds of attention—notoriety of any sort will bring you power. Better to be slandered and attacked than ignored.
At the beginning of your rise, spend all your energy on attracting attention. The quality of attention is irrelevant.

II: Create an air of mystery

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. An air of mystery heightens your presence; it also creates anticipation—everyone will be watching you to see what happens next. Use mystery to beguile, seduce, even frighten.
Remember: Most people are upfront, can be read like an open book, take little care to control their words or image, and are hopelessly predictable. By simply holding back, keeping silent, occasionally uttering ambiguous phrases, deliberately appearing inconsistent, and acting odd in the subtlest of ways, you will emanate an aura of mystery.
Do not let mystery turn to an air of deceit; it must always seem a game, playful, unthreatening.

7. Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.

Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

You must secure the credit for yourself.
Learn to take advantage of others work to further your own cause.
Use the past, a vast storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Learn this and you will look like a genius.
Note: be sure to know when letting other people share the credit furthers your cause.

8. Make other people come to you - use bait if necessary.

When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains—then attack. You hold the cards.

The essence of power is keeping the initiative and forcing others to react, keeping them on the defensive.
Master your anger yet play on people’s natural tendency to react angrily when pushed and baited.

9. Win through your actions, never through argument.

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.

When aiming for power, always look for the indirect route.
Verbal argument has one use: deception when covering tracks or caught in a lie.

10. Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky.

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 only 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.

The most important person to avoid: the sufferer of chronic dissatisfaction.
Examine someone’s history to recognize these people: turbulence, a long line of broken relationships, etc.
The other side of infection is equally valid: there are those who attract happiness by their good cheer, natural buoyancy, and intelligence.
Use this rule to counteract your own undesirable or weak qualities.

11. Learn to keep people dependent on you.

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

Do not mistake independence for power; power requires a relationship.
To cultivate this: possess a talent and creative skill that simply cannot be replaced.

12. Use selective honesty and generosity to disarm your victim.

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.

Learn to give before you take - an actual gift, a generous act, a kind favour, an “honest” admission - whatever it takes.
Selective honesty is best employed on your first encounter with someone.
A history of deceit will cause any act of generosity to be viewed with suspicion. Counter by embracing your reputation for dishonesty openly.

13. When asking for help, appeal to people’s self-interest, never to their mercy or gratitude.

If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

Do not be subtle: you have valuable knowledge to share, you can make him rich, you can make him live longer and happier.
Train yourself to see inside other’s needs and interests and desires.
Distinguish differences among powerful people and figure out what makes them tick. When they ooze greed, do not appeal to charity; when they want to look charitable and noble, do not appeal to their greed.

14. Pose as a friend, work as a spy.

Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.

During social gatherings and innocuous encounters, pay attention. This is when people’s guards are down, and they will reveal things.
Give a false confession, and someone else will give you a real one.
Contradict others to stir them to emotion and lose control of their words.

15. Crush your enemy totally.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

Recognize that you will accumulate enemies who you cannot bring over to your side, and that to leave them any escape will mean you are never secure. Crush them completely.

16. Use absence to increase respect and honour.

Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

The truth of this law can most easily be appreciated in matters of love and seduction.
Another example of this law exists in economics - scarcity increases value.
Note: this law only applies once a certain level of power has been attained. Leave too early and you do not increase respect, you are simply forgotten. Similarly, absence is only effective in love and seduction once you have surrounded the other with your image.
In the beginning, make yourself not scarce but omnipresent.

17. Keep others in suspended terror: cultivate an air of unpredictability.

Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

Unsettle those around you and keep the initiative by being unpredictable.
Predictability and patterns can be used as a tool when deceiving.

18. Do not build fortresses to protect yourself - isolation is dangerous.

The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere—everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it Protects you from—it cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target. Better to circulate among people, find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

Retreat to a fortress and you lose contact with your sources of power, and your knowledge of what is going on.
If you need time to think, then choose isolation as a last resort, and only in small doses.

19. Know who you’re dealing with - do not offend the wrong person.

There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs’ clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then—never of fend or deceive the wrong person.

Being able to recognize the type of person you’re dealing with is critical. Here are the five most dangerous:

The Arrogant and Proud Man: any perceived slight will invite vengeance. Flee these people.
The Hopelessly Insecure Man: similar to the proud man, but will take revenge in smaller bites over time. Do not stay around him if you have harmed or deceived him.
Mr. Suspicion: sees the worst in others and imagines that everyone is after him. Easy to deceive - get him to turn on others.
The Serpent with a Long Memory: if hurt, he will show no anger, but will calculate and wait. Recognize by his calculation and cunning in other areas of life - he is usually cold and unaffectionate. Crush him completely or flee.
The Plain, Unassuming, and Often Unintelligent Man: this man will not take the bait because he does not recognize it. Do not waste your resources trying to deceive him. Have a test ready for a mark - a joke, a story. If reaction is literal, this is the type you are dealing with.

Never rely on instincts when judging someone; instead gather concrete knowledge. Also never trust appearances.

20. Do not commit to anyone.

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

Part 1: Do not commit to anyone, but be courted by all.

Stay aloof and gain the power that comes from attention and frustrated desire.

Part 2: Do not commit to anyone - stay above the fray.

Do not let others drag you into their fights. Seem interested and supportive, but neutral.
Staying neutral allows you to keep initiative, and take advantage of the situation when one side starts to lose.
You only have so much time and energy - every moment wasted on affairs of others subtracts from your strength.
Make sure to maintain emotional objectivity in the affairs of others.

21. Play a sucker to catch a sucker - seem dumber than your mark.

No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart—and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.

Intelligence, taste and sophistication are all things you should downplay, or reassure others that they are more advanced than you.

22. Use the surrender tactic: transform weakness into power.

When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you—surrender first. By turning the other cheek you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

The essence of the surrender tactic: inwardly you stay firm, but outwardly you bend. Your enemy will be bewildered when properly executed, as they will be expecting retaliation.

23. Concentrate your forces.

Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper, than by flitting from one shallow mine to another—intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.

Concentrate on a single goal, a single task, and beat it into submission.
Note: when fighting a stronger enemy, you must be prepared to dissolve your forces and be elusive.

24. Play the perfect courtier.

The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

The Laws of Court Politics

Avoid Ostentation: modesty is always preferable.
Practice Nonchalance: never appear to be working too hard; your talent must appear to flow naturally, with ease. Showing your blood and toil is a form of ostentation.
Be Frugal with Flattery: flatter indirectly by being modest.
Arrange to be Noticed: pay attention to your appearance, and find a way to create a subtly distinctive style and image.
Alter Your Style and Language According to the Person You’re Dealing With: acting the same with all will be seen as condescension by those below you, and offend those above you.
Never Be the Bearer of Bad News: the messenger is always killed. Bring only glad news.
Never Affect Friendliness and Intimacy with Your Master: he does not want a friend for a subordinate.
Never Criticize Those Above You Directly: err on the side of subtlety and gentleness.
Be Frugal in Asking Those Above You for Favours: it is always better to earn your favours. Do not ask for favours on another person’s behalf.
Never Joke About Appearances or Taste
Do Not Be the Court Cynic: express admiration for the good work of others.
Be Self-Observant: you must train yourself to evaluate your own actions.
Master Your Emotions
Fit the Spirit of the Times: your spirit and way of thinking must keep up with the times, even if the times offend your sensibilities.
Be a Source of Pleasure: if you cannot be the life of the party, at least obscure your less desirable qualities. ‍

25. Re-create yourself.

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions—your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

The first step in the process of self-creation is being aware of yourself and taking control of your appearances and emotions.
The second step is the creation of a memorable character that compels attention and stands above the others on the stage.
Rhythm, timing and tempo over time also contribute greatly to the creation of a character.
Appreciate the importance of stage entrances and exits.

26. Keep your hands clean.

You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.

Part 1: Conceal your mistakes - have a scapegoat to take the blame.

It is often wise to choose the most innocent victim possible as a sacrificial goat. Be careful, however, not to create a martyr.
A close associate is often the best choice - the “fall of the favourite”.

Part 2: Make use of the cat’s-paw.

Use those around you to complete dirty tasks to hide your intentions and accomplish your goals while keeping your hands clean.
An essential element in this strategy is concealing your goal.
Devices like this are best for approaching those in power, or planting information.
You may also offer yourself as the cat’s-paw to gain power.
Note: you must be very careful in using this tactic, as being revealed would be disastrous.

27. Play on people’s need to believe to create a cult like following.

People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise ; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

How to create a cult in 5 easy steps:

Keep It Vague, Keep it Simple: use words to attract attention, with great enthusiasm. Fancy titles for simple things are helpful, as are the use of numbers and the creation of new words for vague concepts. All of these create the impression of specialized knowledge. People want to hear there is a simple solution to their problems.
Emphasize the Visual and the Sensual over the Intellectual: Boredom and skepticism are two dangers you must counter. The best way to do this is through theatre, creating a spectacle. Appeal to all the senses, and use the exotic.
Borrow the Forms of Organized Religion to Structure the Group: create rituals, organize followers into hierarchy, rank them in grades of sanctity, give them names and titles, ask them for sacrifices that fill your coffers and increase your power. Talk and act like a prophet.
Disguise Your Source of Income: make your wealth seem to come from the truth of your methods.
Set Up an Us-Versus-Them Dynamic: first make sure your followers believe they are part of an exclusive club, unified by common goals. Then, manufacture the notion of a devious enemy out to ruin you.
People are not interested in the truth about change - that it requires hard work - but rather they are dying to believe something romantic, otherworldly.
The most effective cults mix religion with science.

28. Enter action with boldness.

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.

Some of the most pronounced psychological effects of boldness and timidity:

The Bolder the Lie the Better: the sheer audacity of a bold lie makes the story more credible, distracting from its inconsistencies. When entering a negotiation, ask for the moon and you’ll be surprised how often you get it.
Lions Circle the Hesitant Prey: everything depends on perception, and if on a first encounter you demonstrate a willingness to compromise, back down, and retreat, you will be pushed around without mercy.
Boldness Strikes Fear; Fear Creates Authority: the bold move makes you seem larger and more powerful than you are. If it comes suddenly, with stealth and swiftness, it inspires much more than fear - you will be intimidating, and people will be on the defensive in future.
Going Halfway with Half a Heart Digs the Deeper Grave: if you enter action with less than total confidence, problems will cause you to grow confused rather than pushing through.
Hesitation Creates Gaps, Boldness Obliterates Them: when you take time to think, you create a gap that allows others time to think as well. Boldness leaves others no space to doubt and worry.
Audacity Separates You from the Herd: the bold draw attention, and seem larger than life. We cannot keep our eyes off the audacious.
Most of us are timid. We want to avoid tension and conflict and be liked by all. We are terrified of consequences, what others might think of us, and the hostility we will stir up if we dare go beyond our usual place.
You must practice and develop your boldness. The place to begin is in negotiations. How often we ask too little.
Remember: the problems created by an audacious move can be disguised, even remedied, by more and greater audacity.

29. Plan all the way to the end.

The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

The ending is everything - it is the end of action that determines who gets the glory, the money, the prize. Your conclusion must be crystal clear, and you must keep it constantly in mind.

30. Make your accomplishments seem effortless.

Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work—it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
Some think exposure to how hard they work and practice demonstrates diligence and honesty, but really it just shows weakness.
Sprezzatura: the capacity to make the difficult seem easy.
What is understandable is not awe-inspiring. The more mystery surrounds your actions, the more awesome your power seems.
You appear to be the only one who can do what you do, and because you achieve accomplishments with grace and ease, people believe that you can always do more.

31. Control the options: get others to play with the cards you deal.

The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.

Withdrawal and disappearance are classic ways of controlling the options. You give people a sense of how things will fall apart without you, and you offer them the choice: I stay away and you suffer, or I return under my conditions.
We actually find choices between a small number of alternatives more desirable than complete freedom of options.

The following are among the most common forms of controlling the options:

Color the Choices: Propose multiple solutions, but present the preferred one in the best light compared to the others. Excellent device for the insecure master.
Force the Resister: This is a good technique to use on children and other willful people who enjoy doing the opposite of what you ask them to: Push them to choose what you want them to do by appearing to advocate the opposite.
Alter the Playing Field: In this tactic your opponents know their hand is being forced, but it doesn’t matter. The technique is effective against those who resist at all costs.
The Shrinking Options: A variation on this technique is to raise the price every time the buyer hesitates and another day goes by. This is an excellent negotiating ploy to use on the chronically indecisive, who will fall for the idea that they are getting a better deal today than if they wait till tomorrow.
The Weak Man on the Precipice: He would describe all sorts of dangers, exaggerating them as much as possible, until the duke saw a yawning abyss in every direction except one: the one Retz was pushing him to take. This tactic is similar to "Color the Choices," but with the weak you have to be more aggressive. Work on their emotions—use fear and terror to propel them into action. Try reason and they will always find a way to procrastinate.
Brothers in Crime: This is a classic con-artist technique: You attract your victims to some criminal scheme, creating a bond of blood and guilt between you. They participate in your deception, commit a crime (or think they do), and are easily manipulated. It is often wise to implicate in your deceptions the very person who can do you the most harm if you fail. Their involvement can be subtle—even a hint of their involvement will narrow their options and buy their silence.
The Horns of a Dilemma: This is a classic trial lawyer’s technique: The lawyer leads the witnesses to decide between two possible explanations of an event, both of which poke a hole in their story. They have to answer the lawyer’s questions, but whatever they say they hurt themselves. The key to this move is to strike quickly: Deny the victim the time to think of an escape. As they wriggle between the horns of the dilemma, they dig their own grave.
Controlling the options has one main purpose: to disguise yourself as the agent of power and punishment.

32. Play to people’s fantasies.

The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Never promise a gradual improvement through hard work; rather, promise the moon, the great and sudden transformation, the pot of gold.
The key to fantasy is distance - the distance has allure and promise, seems simple and problem free. What you are offering, then, should be ungraspable. Never let it become oppressively familiar.

33. Discover each man’s thumbscrew.

Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

How to find weaknesses:

Pay Attention to Gestures and Unconscious Signals: everyday conversation is a great place to look. Start by always seeming interested. Offer a revelation of your own if needed. Probe for suspected weaknesses indirectly. Train your eyes for details.
Find the Helpless Child: knowing about a childhood can often reveal weaknesses, or when they revert to acting like a child.
Look for Contrasts: an overt trait often conceals its opposite. The shy crave attention, the uptight want adventure, etc.
Find the Weak Link: find the person who will bend under pressure, or the one who pulls strings behind the scenes.
Fill the Void: the two main emotional voids are insecurity and unhappiness.
Feed on Uncontrollable Emotions: the uncontrollable emotion can be a paranoid fear or any base motive such as lust, greed, vanity or hatred.
Always look for passions and obsessions that cannot be controlled. The stronger the passion, the more vulnerable the person.
People’s need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important, is the best kind of weakness to exploit. To do so, all you need to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence.
Timidity can be exploited by pushing them into bold actions that serve your needs while also making them dependent on you.

34. Be royal in your own fashion: act like a king to be treated like one.

The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself.
Use The Strategy of the Crown - if we believe we are destined for great things, our belief will radiate outward, just as a crown creates an aura around a king.
The trick is simple: be overcome by your self-belief.
This may separate you from people, but that’s the point. You must always act with dignity, though this should not be confused with arrogance.
Dignity is the mask you assume that makes it as if nothing can affect you, and you have all the time in the world to respond.

There are other strategies to help:

The Columbus Strategy : always make a bold demand. Set your price high and do not waver.
The David and Goliath Strategy: go after the highest person in the building. This immediately puts you on the same plane as the chief executive you are attacking.
The Patron Strategy: give a gift of some sort to those above you.

35. Master the art of timing.

Never seem to be in a hurry-hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

Three types of time and how to deal with them:

Long Time: be patient, control your emotions, and take advantage of opportunities when they arise. You will gain long-term perspective and see further in the future.
Forced Time: the trick in forcing time is to upset the timing of others - to make them hurry, make them wait, make them abandon their own pace. Use the deadline, apply sudden pressure, change pace to use this.
End Time: patience is useless unless combined with a willingness to act decisively at the right moment. Use speed to paralyze your opponents, cover any mistakes, and impress people with your aura of authority and finality.

36. Disdain things you cannot have: ignoring them is the best revenge.

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.

Desire creates paradoxical effects: the more you want something, the more you chase after it, the more it eludes you. You need to do the reverse: turn your back on what you want, show your contempt and disdain to create desire.
Instead of focusing attention on a problem, it is often better not to acknowledge it’s existence:
Sour-grapes approach: act as if something never really interested you in the first place.
When attacked, look away, answer sweetly, and show how little the attack concerns you.
Treat it lightly if you have committed a blunder.
Note: make sure to show the above publicly, but to monitor the problem privately, making sure it is remedied.

37. Create compelling spectacles.

Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power—everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

Words often go astray, but symbols and the visual strike with emotional power and immediacy.
Find an associate yourself with powerful images and symbols to gain power.
Most effective of all is a new combination - a fusion of images and symbols that have not been seen together before, but that clearly demonstrate your new idea, message, religion.

38. Think as you like but behave like others.

If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
Flaunting your pleasure in alien ways of thinking and acting will reveal a different motive - to demonstrate your superiority over your fellows.
Wise and clever people learn early on that they can display conventional behavior and mouth conventional ideas without having to believe in them. The power these people gain from blending in is that of being left alone to have the thoughts they want to have, and to express them to the people they want to express them to, without suffering isolation or ostracism.
The only time it is worth standing out is when you already stand out—when you have achieved an unshakable position of power, and can display your difference from others as a sign of the distance between you.

39. Stir up waters to catch fish.

Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

This is the essence of the Law: When the waters are still, your opponents have the time and space to plot actions that they will initiate and control. So stir the waters, force the fish to the surface, get them to act before they are ready, steal the initiative. The best way to do this is to play on uncontrollable emotions—pride, vanity, love, hate.
Angry people end up looking ridiculous. It is comical how much they take personally, and more comical how they belief that outbursts signify power.
We should not repress our angry or emotional responses, but rather that realize in the social realm, and the game of power, nothing is personal.
Reveal an apparent weakness to lure your opponent into action.
In the face of someone angry, nothing is more infuriating than someone who keeps his cool while others are losing theirs.
Note: do not provoke those who are too powerful.
There are times when a burst of anger can do good, but it must be manufactured and under your control.

40. Despise the free lunch.

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.

What is offered for free often has a psychological price tag - complicated feelings of obligation, compromises with quality, the insecurity those compromises bring, on and on. By paying the full price, you keep your independence and room to maneuver.
Being open and flexible with money also teaches the value of strategic generosity.

Avoid these people who fail to use money creatively and strategically, or turn their inflexibility to your advantage:

The Greedy Fish. The greedy fish take the human side out of money. Cold and ruthless, they see only the lifeless balance sheet; viewing others solely as either pawns or obstructions in their pursuit of wealth, they trample on people’s sentiments and alienate valuable allies. No one wants to work with the greedy fish, and over the years they end up isolated, which often proves their undoing. Easy to deceive with promise of money.
The Bargain Demon. Powerful people judge everything by what it costs, not just in money but in time, dignity, and peace of mind. And this is exactly what Bargain Demons cannot do. Wasting valuable time digging for bargains, they worry endlessly about what they could have gotten elsewhere for a little less. Just avoid these types.
The Sadist. Financial sadists play vicious power games with money as a way of asserting their power. They believe the money they give you allows them to abuse your time. Accept a financial loss instead of getting entangled.
The Indiscriminate Giver. These people give to everyone, and as a result no one feels special. Appealing as a mark, but you will often feel burdened by their emotional need.
Never let lust for money lure you from true power. Make power your goal and money will find it’s way to you.
Note: bait your deceptions with the possibility of easy money, and many will fall for it.

41. Avoid stepping into a great man’s shoes.

What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your own making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.

If you cannot start materially from ground zero - it would be foolish to renounce an inheritance- you can at least begin from ground zero psychologically.
Never let yourself be seen as following your predecessor’s path. You must physically demonstrate your difference, by establishing a style and symbolism that set you apart.
Repeating actions will not re-create success, because circumstances never repeat themselves exactly.
Success and power make us lazy - you must reset psychologically to counter this laziness.

42. Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.

Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual —the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them—they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.

In every group, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two people.
When troubles arise, find the source, and isolate them - physically, politically or psychologically. Separate them from their power base.

43. Work on the hearts and minds of others.

Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.

Remember: The key to persuasion is softening people up and breaking them down, gently. Seduce them with a two-pronged approach: Work on their emotions and play on their intellectual weaknesses. Be alert to both what separates them from everyone else (their individual psychology) and what they share with everyone else (their basic emotional responses). Aim at the primary emotions—love, hate, jealousy. Once you move their emotions you have reduced their control, making them more vulnerable to persuasion.
Play on contrasts: push people to despair, then give them relief. If they expect pain and you give them pleasure, you win their hearts.
Symbolic gestures of self-sacrifice can win sympathy and goodwill.
The quickest way to secure people’s minds is by demonstrating, as simply as possible, how an action will benefit them.

44. Disarm and infuriate with the mirror effect.

The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of the Mirror Effect.

Mirror Effects can disturb or entrance others, giving you power to manipulate or seduce them.

There are four main Mirror effects:

The Neutralizing Effect: do what your enemies do, following their actions as best you can, and they are blinded. A reverse version is the Shadow - shadow your opponents every move without them seeing you.
The Narcissus Effect: look into the desires, values, tastes, spirit of others, and reflect it back to them.
The Moral Effect: teach others by giving them a taste of their own medicine. They must realize you are doing to them the same thing they did to you.
The Hallucinatory Effect: create a perfect copy of an object, a place, a person, that people take for the real thing, because it has the physical appearance of the real thing.
Understand: Everyone is wrapped up in their own narcissistic shell. When you try to impose your own ego on them, a wall goes up, resistance is increased. By mirroring them, however, you seduce them into a kind of narcissistic rapture: They are gazing at a double of their own soul. This double is actually manufactured in its entirety by you. Once you have used the mirror to seduce them, you have great power over them.
One way to create a mirror for someone is to teach them a lesson through an analogy, avoiding the reactionary increase in resistance you’d encounter if brought up directly.
Note: avoid mirrored situations you don’t understand, as those involved will quickly see through it, and the mirrored situation will not live up to the original.

45. Preach the need for change, but never reform too much at once.

Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.

Borrow the weight and legitimacy from the past, however remote, to create a comforting and familiar presence.
Humans desire change in the abstract, or superficial change, but a change that upsets core habits and routines is deeply disturbing to them.
Understand: The fact that the past is dead and buried gives you the freedom to reinterpret it. To support your cause, tinker with the facts. The past is a text in which you can safely insert your own lines.
A simple gesture like using an old title, or keeping the same number for a group, will tie you to the past and support you with the authority of history.

46. Never appear too perfect.

Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.

Either dampen your brilliance occasionally, purposefully revealing a defect, weakness, or anxiety, or attributing your success to luck; or simply find yourself new friends. Never underestimate the power of envy.
The envy of the masses can be deflected quite easily - appear as one of them in style and values. Never flaunt your wealth, and carefully conceal the degree to which it has bought influence. Make a display of deferring to others, as if they were more powerful than you.
Use envy to motivate you to greater heights.
Keep a wary eye for envy in those below you as you grow more successful.
Expect that those envious of you will work against you.
Emphasize luck, and do not adopt a false modesty that will be seen through.
Deflect envy of political power by not seeming ambitious.
Disguise your power as a kind of self-sacrifice rather than a source of happiness for you. Emphasize your troubles and you turn potential envy into a source of moral support (pity).
Beware signs of envy: excessive praise, hypercritical people, public slandering.
Note: once envy is present, it is sometimes best to display the utmost disdain for those who envy you.

47. Do not go past the mark you aimed for; in victory, learn when to stop.

The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.

Understand: In the realm of power, you must be guided by reason. To let a momentary thrill or an emotional victory influence or guide your moves will prove fatal. When you attain success, step back. Be cautious. When you gain victory, understand the part played by the particular circumstances of a situation, and never simply repeat the same actions again and again. History is littered with the ruins of victorious empires and the corpses of leaders who could not learn to stop and consolidate their gains.
The powerful vary their rhythms and patterns, change course, adapt to circumstance, and learn to improvise. They control their emotions, and step back and come to a mental halt when they have attained success.
Good luck is more dangerous than bad luck, because it deludes you into thinking your own brilliance is the reason for your success.
Note: There are some who become more cautious than ever after a victory, which they see as just giving them more possessions to worry about and protect. Your caution after victory should never make you hesitate, or lose momentum, but rather act as a safeguard against rash action. On the other hand, momentum as a phenomenon is greatly overrated. You create your own successes, and if they follow one upon the other, it is your own doing. Belief in momentum will only make you emotional, less prone to act strategically, and more apt to repeat the same methods. Leave momentum for those who have nothing better to rely upon.

48. Assume formlessness.

By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.

The powerful are constantly creating form, and their power comes from the rapidity with which they can change.
The first psychological requirement of formlessness is to train yourself to take nothing personally. Never show any defensiveness.
When you find yourself in conflict with someone stronger and more rigid, allow them a momentary victory. Seem to bow to their superiority. Then, by being formless, slowly insinuate yourself.
The need for formlessness becomes greater as we age, as we become more likely to become set in our ways and assume too rigid a form. As you get older, you must rely even less on the past.
Remember: Formlessness is a tool. Never confuse it with a go-with-the-flow style, or with a religious resignation to the twists of fortune. You use formlessness, not because it creates inner harmony and peace, but because it will increase your power.
Finally, learning to adapt to each new circumstance means seeing events through your own eyes, and often ignoring the advice that people constantly peddle your way. It means that ultimately you must throw out the laws that others preach, and the books they write to tell you what to do, and the sage advice of the elder.
Note: when you do finally engage an enemy, hit them with a powerful, concentrated blow.

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The 48 Laws of Power Paperback – September 1, 2000

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Print length 452 pages
Language English
Publisher Penguin Books
Publication date September 1, 2000
Grade level 12 and up
Reading age 18 years and up
Dimensions 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
ISBN-10 0140280197
ISBN-13 978-0140280197
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From the back cover.

A moral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power into forty-eight well-explicated laws. As attention-grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers. Some laws require prudence ("Law 1: Never Outshine the Master"), some stealth ("Law 3: Conceal Your Intentions"), and some the total absence of mercy ("Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally") but like it or not, all have applications in real-life situations. Illustrated through the tactics of Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P. T. Barnum, and other famous figures who have wielded -- or been victimized by -- power, these laws will fascinate any reader interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control.

About the Author

Table of Contents

About the Authors

Acknowledgments

LAW 1 - NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER

LAW 2 - NEVER PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN FRIENDS, LEARN HOW TO USE ENEMIES

LAW 3 - CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS

LAW 4 - ALWAYS SAY LESS THAN NECESSARY

LAW 5 - SO MUCH DEPENDS ON REPUTATION—GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE

LAW 6 - COURT ATTENTION AT ALL COST

LAW 7 - GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE THE CREDIT

LAW 8 - MAKE OTHER PEOPLE COME TO YOU—USE BAIT IF NECESSARY

LAW 9 - WIN THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, NEVER THROUGH ARGUMENT

LAW 10 - INFECTION: AVOID THE UNHAPPY AND UNLUCKY

LAW 11 - LEARN TO KEEP PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON YOU

LAW 12 - USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM

LAW 13 - WHEN ASKING FOR HELP, APPEAL TO PEOPLE’S SELF-INTEREST, NEVER TO THEIR ...

LAW 14 - POSE AS A FRIEND, WORK AS A SPY

LAW 15 - CRUSH YOUR ENEMY TOTALLY

LAW 16 - USE ABSENCE TO INCREASE RESPECT AND HONOR

LAW 17 - KEEP OTHERS IN SUSPENDED TERROR: CULTIVATE AN AIR OF UNPREDICTABILITY

LAW 18 - DO NOT BUILD FORTRESSES TO PROTECT YOURSELF—ISOLATION IS DANGEROUS

LAW 19 - KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH—DO NOT OFFEND THE WRONG PERSON

LAW 20 - DO NOT COMMIT TO ANYONE

LAW 21 - PLAY A SUCKER TO CATCH A SUCKER—SEEM DUMBER THAN YOUR MARK

LAW 22 - USE THE SURRENDER TACTIC: TRANSFORM WEAKNESS INTO POWER

LAW 23 - CONCENTRATE YOUR FORCES

LAW 24 - PLAY THE PERFECT COURTIER

LAW 25 - RE-CREATE YOURSELF

LAW 26 - KEEP YOUR HANDS CLEAN

LAW 27 - PLAY ON PEOPLE’S NEED TO BELIEVE TO CREATE A CULTLIKE FOLLOWING

LAW 28 - ENTER ACTION WITH BOLDNESS

LAW 29 - PLAN ALL THE WAY TO THE END

LAW 30 - MAKE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS SEEM EFFORTLESS

LAW 31 - CONTROL THE OPTIONS: GET OTHERS TO PLAY WITH THE CARDS YOU DEAL

LAW 32 - PLAY TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES

LAW 33 - DISCOVER EACH MAN’S THUMBSCREW

LAW 34 - BE ROYAL IN YOUR OWN FASHION: ACT LIKE A KING TO BE TREATED LIKE ONE

LAW 35 - MASTER THE ART OF TIMING

LAW 36 - DISDAIN THINGS YOU CANNOT HAVE: IGNORING THEM IS THE BEST REVENGE

LAW 37 - CREATE COMPELLING SPECTACLES

LAW 38 - THINK AS YOU LIKE BUT BEHAVE LIKE OTHERS

LAW 39 - STIR UP WATERS TO CATCH FISH

LAW 40 - DESPISE THE FREE LUNCH

LAW 41 - AVOID STEPPING INTO A GREAT MAN’S SHOES

LAW 42 - STRIKE THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP WILL SCATTER

LAW 43 - WORK ON THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF OTHERS

LAW 44 - DISARM AND INFURIATE WITH THE MIRROR EFFECT

LAW 45 - PREACH THE NEED FOR CHANGE, BUT NEVER REFORM TOO MUCH AT ONCE

LAW 46 - NEVER APPEAR TOO PERFECT

LAW 47 - DO NOT GO PAST THE MARK YOU AIMED FOR; IN VICTORY, LEARN WHEN TO STOP

LAW 48 - ASSUME FORMLESSNESS

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Robert Greene has a degree in classical studies and has been an editor at Esquire and other magazines. He is also a playwright and lives in Los Angeles.

Joost Elffers is the producer of Penguin Studio’s bestselling The Secret Language of Birthdays, The Secret Language of Relationships, and of Play With Your Food. He lives in New York City.

PENGUIN BOOKS Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pry Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1311, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

First published in the United States of America by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc. 1998 Published in Penguin Books 2000

A portion of this work first appeared in The Utne Reader.

CIP data available.

ISBN: 9781101042458

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

The Power of the Charlatan by Grete de Francesco, translated by Miriam Beard. Copyright, 1939, by Yale University Press. By permission of Yale University Press.

The Oracle: A Manual of the Art of Discretion by Baltasar Gracián, translated by L. B. Walton; Orion Press.

The Great Fables of All Nations, selected by Manuel Komroff; Tudor Publishing Company. Copyright, 1928, by Dial Press, Inc.

The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris, translated by Charles Dahlberg; Princeton University Press.

The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, translated by Rex Warner; Penguin Books (London). Translation copyright Rex Warner, 1954.

The Court Artist: On the Ancestry of the Modern Artist by Martin Warnke, translated by David McLintock. Translation © Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and Cambridge University Press 1993. By permission of Cambridge University Press.

To Anna Biller, and to my parents R. G.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First I would like to thank Anna Biller, who helped edit and research this book, and whose invaluable insights played a critical role in the shape and content of The 48 Laws. Without her, none of this would have been possible.

I must also thank my dear friend Michiel Schwarz who was responsible for involving me in the art school Fabrika in Italy and introducing me there to Joost Elffers, my partner and producer of The 48 Laws of Power. It was in the scheming world of Fabrika that Joost and I saw the timeless-ness of Machiavelli and from our discussions in Venice, Italy, this book was born.

I would like to thank Henri Le Goubin, who supplied me with many Machiavellian anecdotes over the years, particularly concerning the numerous French characters who play such a large role in this book.

I would also like to thank Les and Sumiko Biller, who lent me their library on Japanese history and helped me with the Japanese Tea Ceremony part of the book. Similarly, I must thank my good friend Elizabeth Yang who advised me on Chinese history.

A book like this depended greatly on the research material available and I am particularly grateful to the UCLA Research Library; I spent many pleasant days wandering through its incomparable collections.

My parents, Laurette and Stanley Green, deserve endless thanks for their patience and support.

And I must not forget to pay tribute to my cat, Boris, who kept me company throughout the never-ending days of writing.

Finally, to those people in my life who have so skillfully used the game of power to manipulate, torture, and cause me pain over the years, I bear you no grudges and I thank you for supplying me with inspiration for The 48 Laws of Power.

Robert Greene

In addition, we would like to thank Susan Petersen and Barbara Grossman, the Penguin publishers for believing in this book; Molly Stern, editor, who oversaw the whole project for Viking Penguin. Sophia Murer, for her new classic design. David Frankel, for editing the text. Roni Axelrod, Barbara Campo, Jaye Zimet, Joe Eagle, Radha Pancham, Marie Timell, Michael Fragnito, and Eng-San Kho.

Robert Greene Joost Elffers

The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us—when we feel helpless we feel miserable. No one wants less power; everyone wants more. In the world today, however, it is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power moves. We have to seem fair and decent. So we need to be subtle—congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.

This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court. Throughout history, a court has always formed itself around the person in power—king, queen, emperor, leader. The courtiers who filled this court were in an especially delicate position: They had to serve their masters, but if they seemed to fawn, if they curried favor too obviously, the other courtiers around them would notice and would act against them. Attempts to win the master’s favor, then, had to be subtle. And even skilled courtiers capable of such subtlety still had to protect themselves from their fellow courtiers, who at all moments were scheming to push them aside.

Meanwhile the court was supposed to represent the height of civilization and refinement. Violent or overt power moves were frowned upon; courtiers would work silently and secretly against any among them who used force. This was the courtier’s dilemma: While appearing the very paragon of elegance, they had to outwit and thwart their own opponents in the subtlest of ways. The successful courtier learned over time to make all of his moves indirect; if he stabbed an opponent in the back, it was with a velvet glove on his hand and the sweetest of smiles on his face. Instead of using coercion or outright treachery, the perfect courtier got his way through seduction, charm, deception, and subtle strategy, always planning several moves ahead. Life in the court was a never-ending game that required constant vigilance and tactical thinking. It was civilized war.

Today we face a peculiarly similar paradox to that of the courtier: Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair. But if we play by those rules too strictly, if we take them too literally, we are crushed by those around us who are not so foolish. As the great 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.” The court imagined itself the pinnacle of refinement, but underneath its glittering surface a cauldron of dark emotions—greed, envy, lust, hatred—boiled and simmered. Our world today similarly imagines itself the pinnacle of fairness, yet the same ugly emotions still stir within us, as they have forever. The game is the same. Outwardly, you must seem to respect the niceties, but inwardly, unless you are a fool, you learn quickly to be prudent, and to do as Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove. If, like the courtier of times gone by, you can master the arts of indirection, learning to seduce, charm, deceive, and subtly outmaneuver your opponents, you will attain the heights of power. You will be able to make people bend to your will without their realizing what you have done. And if they do not realize what you have done, they will neither resent nor resist you.

Courts are, unquestionably, the seats of politeness and good breeding; were they not so, they would be the seats of slaughter and desolation. Those who now smile upon and embrace, would affront and stab, each other, if manners did not interpose....

LORD CHESTERFIELD, 1694-1773

To some people the notion of consciously playing power games—no matter how indirect—seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power. They utilize strategies that cleverly disguise the nature of the manipulation involved. These types, for example, will often display their weakness and lack of power as a kind of moral virtue. But true powerlessness, without any motive of self-interest, would not publicize its weakness to gain sympathy or respect. Making a show of one’s weakness is actually a very effective strategy, subtle and deceptive, in the game of power (see Law 22, the Surrender Tactic).

There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, “These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever is the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?” there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument—though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, “We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb.”

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844-1900

Another strategy of the supposed nonplayer is to demand equality in every area of life. Everyone must be treated alike, whatever their status and strength. But if, to avoid the taint of power, you attempt to treat everyone equally and fairly, you will confront the problem that some people do certain things better than others. Treating everyone equally means ignoring their differences, elevating the less skillful and suppressing those who excel. Again, many of those who behave this way are actually deploying another power strategy, redistributing people’s rewards in a way that they determine.

Yet another way of avoiding the game would be perfect honesty and straightforwardness, since one of the main techniques of those who seek power is deceit and secrecy. But being perfectly honest will inevitably hurt and insult a great many people, some of whom will choose to injure you in return. No one will see your honest statement as completely objective and free of some personal motivation. And they will be right: In truth, the use of honesty is indeed a power strategy, intended to convince people of one’s noble, good-hearted, selfless character. It is a form of persuasion, even a subtle form of coercion.

Finally, those who claim to be nonplayers may affect an air of naïveté, to protect them from the accusation that they are after power. Beware again, however, for the appearance of naivete can be an effective means of deceit (see Law 21, Seem Dumber Than Your Mark). And even genuine naivete is not free of the snares of power. Children may be naive in many ways, but they often act from an elemental need to gain control over those around them. Children suffer greatly from feeling powerless in the adult world, and they use any means available to get their way. Genuinely innocent people may still be playing for power, and are often horribly effective at the game, since they are not hindered by reflection. Once again, those who make 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

You can recognize these supposed nonplayers by the way they flaunt their moral qualities, their piety, their exquisite sense of justice. But since all of us hunger for power, and almost all of our actions are aimed at gaining it, the nonplayers are merely throwing dust in our eyes, distracting us from their power plays with their air of moral superiority. If you observe them closely, you will see in fact that they are often the ones most skillful at indirect manipulation, even if some of them practice it unconsciously. And they greatly resent any publicizing of the tactics they use every day.

The arrow shot by the archer may or may not kill a single person. But stratagems devised by a wise man can kill even babes in the womb.

KAUTILYA, INDIAN PHILOSOPHER, THIRD CENTURY B.C.

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. By following the route of the perfect courtier (see Law 24) you learn to make others feel better about themselves, becoming a source of pleasure to them. They will grow dependent on your abilities and desirous of your presence. By mastering the 48 laws in this book, you spare others the pain that comes from bungling with power—by playing with fire without knowing its properties. If the game of power is inescapable, better to be an artist than a denier or a bungler.

Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective. It takes effort and years of practice, for much of the game may not come naturally. Certain basic skills are required, and once you master these skills you will be able to apply the laws of power more easily.

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. 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 is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most. It also has a ripple effect that invariably makes situations less controllable and heightens your enemy’s resolve. If you are trying to destroy an enemy who has hurt you, far better to keep him off-guard by feigning friendliness than showing your anger.

Love and affection are also potentially destructive, in that they blind you to the often self-serving interests of those whom you least suspect of playing a power game. You cannot repress anger or love, or avoid feeling them, and you should not try. But you should be careful about how you express them, and most important, they should never influence your plans and strategies in any way.

Related to mastering your emotions is the ability to distance yourself from the present moment and think objectively about the past and future. Like Janus, the double-faced Roman deity and guardian of all gates and doorways, you must be able to look in both directions at once, the better to handle danger from wherever it comes. Such is the face you must create for yourself-one face looking continuously to the future and the other to the past.

I thought to myself with what means, with what deceptions, with how many varied arts, with what industry a man sharpens his wits to deceive another, and through these variations the world is made more beautiful.

FRANCESCO VETTORI, CONTEMPORARY AND FRIEND OF MACHIAVELLI, EARLY SIXTEENTH CENTURY

For the future, the motto is, “No days unalert.” Nothing should catch you by surprise because you are constantly imagining problems before they arise. 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. The further you see, the more steps ahead you plan, the more powerful you become.

The other face of Janus looks constantly to the past—though not to remember past hurts or bear grudges. That would only curb your power. Half of the game is learning how to forget those events in the past that eat away at you and cloud your reason. The real purpose of the backward-glancing eye is to educate yourself constantly—you look at the past to learn from those who came before you. (The many historical examples in this book will greatly help that process.) Then, having looked to the past, you look closer at hand, to your own actions and those of your friends. This is the most vital school you can learn from, because it comes from personal experience.

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than an entire nation.

HONORÉ DE BALZAC, 1799-1850

You begin by examining the mistakes you have made in the past, the ones that have most grievously held you back. You analyze them in terms of the 48 laws of power, and you extract from them a lesson and an oath: “I shall never repeat such a mistake; I shall never fall into such a trap again.” If you can evaluate and observe yourself in this way, you can learn to break the patterns of the past—an immensely valuable skill.

Power requires the ability to play with appearances. To this end you must learn to wear many masks and keep a bag full of deceptive tricks. Deception and masquerade should not be seen as ugly or immoral. All human interaction requires deception on many levels, and in some ways what separates humans from animals is our ability to lie and deceive. In Greek myths, in India’s Mahabharata cycle, in the Middle Eastern epic of Gilga mesh, it is the privilege of the gods to use deceptive arts; a great man, Odysseus for instance, was judged by his ability to rival the craftiness of the gods, stealing some of their divine power by matching them in wits and deception. Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.

You cannot succeed at deception unless you take a somewhat distanced approach to yourself—unless you can be many different people, wearing the mask that the day and the moment require. With such a flexible approach to all appearances, including your own, you lose a lot of the inward heaviness that holds people down. Make your face as malleable as the actor’s, work to conceal your intentions from others, practice luring people into traps. Playing with appearances and mastering arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.

If deception is the most potent weapon in your arsenal, then patience in all things is your crucial shield. Patience will protect you from making moronic blunders. Like mastering your emotions, patience is a skill—it does not come naturally. But nothing about power is natural; power is more godlike than anything in the natural world. And patience is the supreme virtue of the gods, who have nothing but time. Everything good will happen—the grass will grow again, if you give it time and see several steps into the future. Impatience, on the other hand, only makes you look weak. It is a principal impediment to power.

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. You measure their strategy and their power by what you can see and feel. How often are someone’s intentions made the issue only to cloud and deceive! 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.

It is a game. Your opponent sits opposite you. Both of you behave as gentlemen or ladies, observing the rules of the game and taking nothing personally. You play with a strategy and you observe your opponent’s moves with as much calmness as you can muster. In the end, you will appreciate the politeness of those you are playing with more than their good and sweet intentions. Train your eye to follow the results of their moves, the outward circumstances, and do not be distracted by anything else.

Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do not do, what you do not allow yourself to get dragged into. For this skill you must learn to judge all things by what they cost you. As Nietzsche wrote, “The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it—what it costs us.” Perhaps you will attain your goal, and a worthy goal at that, but at what price? Apply this standard to everything, including whether to collaborate with other people or come to their aid. In the end, life is short, opportunities are few, and you have only so much energy to draw on. And in this sense time is as important a consideration as any other. Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others—that is too high a price to pay.

Power is a social game. To learn and master it, you must develop the ability to study and understand people. As the great seventeenth-century thinker and courtier Baltasar Gracián wrote: “Many people spend time studying the properties of animals or herbs; how much more important it would be to study those of people, with whom we must live or die!” To be a master player you must also be a master psychologist. You must recognize motivations and see through the cloud of dust with which people surround their actions. An understanding of people’s hidden motives is the single greatest piece of knowledge you can have in acquiring power. It opens up endless possibilities of deception, seduction, and manipulation.

People are of infinite complexity and you can spend a lifetime watching them without ever fully understanding them. So it is all the more important, then, to begin your education now. In doing so you must also keep one principle in mind: Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust. Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.

Finally, you must learn always to take the indirect route to power. Disguise your cunning. Like a billiard ball that caroms several times before it hits its target, your moves must be planned and developed in the least obvious way. By training yourself to be indirect, you can thrive in the modern court, appearing the paragon of decency while being the consummate manipulator.

Consider The 48 Laws of Power a kind of handbook on the arts of indirection. The laws are based on the writings of men and women who have studied and mastered the game of power. These writings span a period of more than three thousand years and were created in civilizations as disparate as ancient China and Renaissance Italy; yet they share common threads and themes, together hinting at an essence of power that has yet to be fully articulated. The 48 laws of power are the distillation of this accumulated wisdom, gathered from the writings of the most illustrious strategists (Sun-tzu, Clausewitz), statesmen (Bismarck, Talleyrand), courtiers (Castiglione, Gracián), seducers (Ninon de Lenclos, Casanova), and con artists (“Yellow Kid” Weil) in history.

The laws have a simple premise: Certain actions almost always increase one’s power (the observance of the law), while others decrease it and even ruin us (the transgression of the law). These transgressions and observances are illustrated by historical examples. The laws are timeless and definitive.

The 48 Laws of Power can be used in several ways. By reading the book straight through you can learn about power in general. Although several of the laws may seem not to pertain directly to your life, in time you will probably find that all of them have some application, and that in fact they are interrelated. By getting an overview of the entire subject you will best be able to evaluate your own past actions and gain a greater degree of control over your immediate affairs. A thorough reading of the book will inspire thinking and reevaluation long after you finish it.

The book has also been designed for browsing and for examining the law that seems at that particular moment most pertinent to you. Say you are experiencing problems with a superior and cannot understand why your efforts have not lead to more gratitude or a promotion. Several laws specifically address the master-underling relationship, and you are almost certainly transgressing one of them. By browsing the initial paragraphs for the 48 laws in the table of contents, you can identify the pertinent law.

Finally, the book can be browsed through and picked apart for entertainment, for an enjoyable ride through the foibles and great deeds of our predecessors in power. A warning, however, to those who use the book for this purpose: It might be better to turn back. Power is endlessly seductive and deceptive in its own way. It is a labyrinth—your mind becomes consumed with solving its infinite problems, and you soon realize how pleasantly lost you have become. In other words, it becomes most amusing by taking it seriously. Do not be frivolous with such a critical matter. The gods of power frown on the frivolous; they give ultimate satisfaction only to those who study and reflect, and punish those who skim the surfaces looking for a good time.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

THE PRINCE, Niccolò Machiavelli, 1469-1527

NEVER OUTSHINE THE MASTER

TRANSGRESSION OF THE LAW

Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s finance minister in the first years of his reign, was a generous man who loved lavish parties, pretty women, and poetry. He also loved money, for he led an extravagant lifestyle. Fouquet was clever and very much indispensable to the king, so when the prime minister, Jules Mazarin, died, in 1661, the finance minister expected to be named the successor. Instead, the king decided to abolish the position. This and other signs made Fouquet suspect that he was falling out of favor, and so he decided to ingratiate himself with the king by staging the most spectacular party the world had ever seen. The party’s ostensible purpose would be to commemorate the completion of Fouquet’s château, Vaux-le-Vicomte, but its real function was to pay tribute to the king, the guest of honor.

The most brilliant nobility of Europe and some of the greatest minds of the time—La Fontaine, La Rochefoucauld, Madame de Sévigné attended the party. Molière wrote a play for the occasion, in which he himself was to perform at the evening’s conclusion. The party began with a lavish seven-course dinner, featuring foods from the Orient never before tasted in France, as well as new dishes created especially for the night. The meal was accompanied with music commissioned by Fouquet to honor the king.

After dinner there was a promenade through the château’s gardens. The grounds and fountains of Vaux-le-Vicomte were to be the inspiration for Versailles.

Fouquet personally accompanied the young king through the geometrically aligned arrangements of shrubbery and flower beds. Arriving at the gardens’ canals, they witnessed a fireworks display, which was followed by the performance of Molière’s play. The party ran well into the night and everyone agreed it was the most amazing affair they had ever attended.

The next day, Fouquet was arrested by the king’s head musketeer, D’Artagnan. Three months later he went on trial for stealing from the country’s treasury. (Actually, most of the stealing he was accused of he had done on the king’s behalf and with the king’s permission.) Fouquet was found guilty and sent to the most isolated prison in France, high in the Pyrenees Mountains, where he spent the last twenty years of his life in solitary confinement.

Interpretation

Louis XIV, the Sun King, was a proud and arrogant man who wanted to be the center of attention at all times; he could not countenance being outdone in lavishness by anyone, and certainly not his finance minister. To succeed Fouquet, Louis chose Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a man famous for his parsimony and for giving the dullest parties in Paris. Colbert made sure that any money liberated from the treasury went straight into Louis’s hands. With the money, Louis built a palace even more magnificent than Fouquet’s—the glorious palace of Versailles. He used the same architects, decorators, and garden designer. And at Versailles, Louis hosted parties even more extravagant than the one that cost Fouquet his freedom.

Let us examine the situation. The evening of the party, as Fouquet presented spectacle on spectacle to Louis, each more magnificent than the one before, he imagined the affair as demonstrating his loyalty and devotion to the king. Not only did he think the party would put him back in the king’s favor, he thought it would show his good taste, his connections, and his popularity, making him indispensable to the king and demonstrating that he would make an excellent prime minister. Instead, however, each new spectacle, each appreciative smile bestowed by the guests on Fouquet, made it seem to Louis that his own friends and subjects were more charmed by the finance minister than by the king himself, and that Fouquet was actually flaunting his wealth and power. Rather than flattering Louis XIV, Fouquet’s elaborate party offended the king’s vanity. Louis would not admit this to anyone, of course—instead, he found a convenient excuse to rid himself of a man who had inadvertently made him feel insecure.

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.

When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world. By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom. Voltaire, 1694-1778

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW

In the early 1600s, the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo found himself in a precarious position. He depended on the generosity of great rulers to support his research, and so, like all Renaissance scientists, he would sometimes make gifts of his inventions and discoveries to the leading patrons of the time. Once, for instance, he presented a military compass he had invented to the Duke of Gonzaga. Then he dedicated a book explaining the use of the compass to the Medicis. Both rulers were grateful, and through them Galileo was able to find more students to teach. No matter how great the discovery, however, his patrons usually paid him with gifts, not cash. This made for a life of constant insecurity and dependence. There must be an easier way, he thought.

Galileo hit on a new strategy in 1610, when he discovered the moons of Jupiter. Instead of dividing the discovery among his patrons—giving one the telescope he had used, dedicating a book to another, and so on—as he had done in the past, he decided to focus exclusively on the Medicis. He chose the Medicis for one reason: Shortly after Cosimo I had established the Medici dynasty, in 1540, he had made Jupiter, the mightiest of the gods, the Medici symbol—a symbol of a power that went beyond politics and banking, one linked to ancient Rome and its divinities.

Galileo turned his discovery of Jupiter’s moons into a cosmic event honoring the Medicis’ greatness. Shortly after the discovery, he announced that “the bright stars [the moons of Jupiter] offered themselves in the heavens” to his telescope at the same time as Cosimo II’s enthronement. He said that the number of the moons—four—harmonized with the number of the Medicis (Cosimo II had three brothers) and that the moons orbited Jupiter as these four sons revolved around Cosimo I, the dynasty’s founder. More than coincidence, this showed that the heavens themselves reflected the ascendancy of the Medici family. After he dedicated the discovery to the Medicis, Galileo commissioned an emblem representing Jupiter sitting on a cloud with the four stars circling about him, and presented this to Cosimo II as a symbol of his link to the stars.

In 1610 Cosimo II made Galileo his official court philosopher and mathematician, with a full salary. For a scientist this was the coup of a lifetime. The days of begging for patronage were over.

In one stroke, Galileo gained more with his new strategy than he had in years of begging. The reason is simple: All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.

They do not care about science or empirical truth or the latest invention ; they care about their name and their glory. Galileo gave the Medicis infinitely more glory by linking their name with cosmic forces than he had by making them the patrons of some new scientific gadget or discovery.

Scientists are not spared the vagaries of court life and patronage. They too must serve masters who hold the purse strings. And their great intellectual powers can make the master feel insecure, as if he were only there to supply the funds—an ugly, ignoble job. The producer of a great work wants to feel he is more than just the provider of the financing. He wants to appear creative and powerful, and also more important than the work produced in his name. Instead of insecurity you must give him glory. Galileo did not challenge the intellectual authority of the Medicis with his discovery, or make them feel inferior in any way; by literally aligning them with the stars, he made them shine brilliantly among the courts of Italy. He did not outshine the master, he made the master outshine all others.

KEYS TO POWER

Everyone has insecurities. When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity. This is to be expected. You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others. With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that life has changed much since the days of Louis XIV and the Medicis. Those who attain high standing in life are like kings and queens: They want to feel secure in their positions, and superior to those around them in intelligence, wit, and charm. It is a deadly but common misperception to believe that by displaying and vaunting your gifts and talents, you are winning the master’s affection. He may feign appreciation, but at his first opportunity he will replace you with someone less intelligent, less attractive, less threatening, just as Louis XIV replaced the sparkling Fouquet with the bland Colbert. And as with Louis, he will not admit the truth, but will find an excuse to rid himself of your presence.

This Law involves two rules that you must realize. First, you can inadvertently outshine a master simply by being yourself. There are masters who are more insecure than others, monstrously insecure; you may naturally outshine them by your charm and grace.

No one had more natural talents than Astorre Manfredi, prince of Faenza. The most handsome of all the young princes of Italy, he captivated his subjects with his generosity and open spirit.

In the year 1500, Cesare Borgia laid siege to Faenza. When the city surrendered, the citizens expected the worst from the cruel Borgia, who, however, decided to spare the town: He simply occupied its fortress, executed none of its citizens, and allowed Prince Manfredi, eighteen at the time, to remain with his court, in complete freedom.

A few weeks later, though, soldiers hauled Astorre Manfredi away to a Roman prison. A year after that, his body was fished out of the River Tiber, a stone tied around his neck. Borgia justified the horrible deed with some sort of trumped-up charge of treason and conspiracy, but the real problem was that he was notoriously vain and insecure. The young man was outshining him without even trying. Given Manfredi’s natural talents, the prince’s mere presence made Borgia seem less attractive and charismatic. The lesson is simple: If you cannot help being charming and superior, you must learn to avoid such monsters of vanity. Either that, or find a way to mute your good qualities when in the company of a Cesare Borgia.

Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want. Entire books could be written about favorites who fell out of favor by taking their status for granted, for daring to outshine. In late-sixteenth-century Japan, the favorite of Emperor Hideyoshi was a man called Sen no Rikyu. The premier artist of the tea ceremony, which had become an obsession with the nobility, he was one of Hideyoshi’s most trusted advisers, had his own apartment in the palace, and was honored throughout Japan. Yet in 1591, Hideyoshi had him arrested and sentenced to death. Rikyu took his own life, instead. The cause for his sudden change of fortune was discovered later: It seems that Rikyu, former peasant and later court favorite, had had a wooden statue made of himself wearing sandals (a sign of nobility) and posing loftily. He had had this statue placed in the most important temple inside the palace gates, in clear sight of the royalty who often would pass by. To Hideyoshi this signified that Rikyu had no sense of limits. Presuming that he had the same rights as those of the highest nobility, he had forgotten that his position depended on the emperor, and had come to believe that he had earned it on his own. This was an unforgivable miscalculation of his own importance and he paid for it with his life. Remember the following: Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.

Knowing the dangers of outshining your master, you can turn this Law to your advantage. First you must flatter and puff up your master. Overt flattery can be effective but has its limits; it is too direct and obvious, and looks bad to other courtiers. Discreet flattery is much more powerful. If you are more intelligent than your master, for example, seem the opposite: Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naive. Make it seem that you need his expertise. 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.

If your ideas are more creative than your master’s, ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible. Make it clear that your advice is merely an echo of his advice.

If you surpass your master in wit, it is okay to play the role of the court jester, but do not make him appear cold and surly by comparison. Tone down your humor if necessary, and find ways to make him seem the dispenser of amusement and good cheer. If you are naturally more sociable and generous than your master, be careful not to be the cloud that blocks his radiance from others. He must appear as the sun around which everyone revolves, radiating power and brilliance, the center of attention. If you are thrust into the position of entertaining him, a display of your limited means may win you his sympathy. Any attempt to impress him with your grace and generosity can prove fatal: Learn from Fouquet or pay the price.

In all of these cases it is not a weakness to disguise your strengths if in the end they lead to power. By letting others outshine you, you remain in control, instead of being a victim of their insecurity. This will all come in handy the day you decide to rise above your inferior status. If, like Galileo, you can make your master shine even more in the eyes of others, then you are a godsend and you will be instantly promoted.

Image: The Stars in the Sky. There can be only one sun at a time. Never obscure the sunlight, or rival the sun’s brilliance; rather, fade into the sky and find ways to heighten the master star’s intensity.

Authority: Avoid outshining the master. All superiority is odious, but the superiority of a subject over his prince is not only stupid, it is fatal. This is a lesson that the stars in the sky teach us—they may be related to the sun, and just as brilliant, but they never appear in her company. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)

You cannot worry about upsetting every person you come across, but you must be selectively cruel. If your superior is a falling star, there is nothing to fear from outshining him. Do not be merciful—your master had no such scruples in his own cold-blooded climb to the top. Gauge his strength. If he is weak, discreetly hasten his downfall: Outdo, outcharm, outsmart him at key moments. If he is very weak and ready to fall, let nature take its course. Do not risk outshining a feeble superior—it might appear cruel or spiteful. But if your master is firm in his position, yet you know yourself to be the more capable, bide your time and be patient. It is the natural course of things that power eventually fades and weakens. Your master will fall someday, and if you play it right, you will outlive and someday outshine him.

NEVER PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN FRIENDS, LEARN HOW TO USE ENEMIES

In the mid-ninth century A.D., a young man named Michael III assumed the throne of the Byzantine Empire. His mother, the Empress Theodora, had been banished to a nunnery, and her lover, Theoctistus, had been murdered ; at the head of the conspiracy to depose Theodora and enthrone Michael had been Michael’s uncle, Bardas, a man of intelligence and ambition. Michael was now a young, inexperienced ruler, surrounded by intriguers, murderers, and profligates. In this time of peril he needed someone he could trust as his councillor, and his thoughts turned to Basilius, his best friend. Basilius had no experience whatsoever in government and politics—in fact, he was the head of the royal stables—but he had proven his love and gratitude time and again.

To have a good enemy, choose a friend: He knows where to strike.

DIANF DE POITIERS, 1499-1566, MISTRESS OF HENRI II OF FRANCE

They had met a few years before, when Michael had been visiting the stables just as a wild horse got loose. Basilius, a young groom from peasant Macedonian stock, had saved Michael’s life. The groom’s strength and courage had impressed Michael, who immediately raised Basilius from the obscurity of being a horse trainer to the position of head of the stables. He loaded his friend with gifts and favors and they became inseparable. Basilius was sent to the finest school in Byzantium, and the crude peasant became a cultured and sophisticated courtier.

Every time I bestow a vacant office I make a hundred discontented persons and one ingrate.

Louis XIV, 1638-1715

Now Michael was emperor, and in need of someone loyal. Who could he better trust with the post of chamberlain and chief councillor than a young man who owed him everything?

Basilius could be trained for the job and Michael loved him like a brother. Ignoring the advice of those who recommended the much more qualified Bardas, Michael chose his friend.

Thus for my own part I have more than once been deceived by the person I loved most and of whose love, above everyone else’s, I have been most confident. So that I believe that it may be right to love and serve one person above all others, according to merit and worth, but never to trust so much in this tempting trap of friendship as to have cause to repent of it later on.

BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE, 1478-1529

Basilius learned well and was soon advising the emperor on all matters of state. The only problem seemed to be money—Basiiius never had enough. Exposure to the splendor of Byzantine court life made him avaricious for the perks of power. Michael doubled, then tripled his salary, ennobled him, and married him off to his own mistress, Eudoxiaingerina. Keeping such a trusted friend and adviser satisfied was worth any price. But more trouble was to come. Bardas was now head of the army, and Basilius convinced Michael that the man was hopelessly ambitious. Under the illusion that he could control his nephew, Bardas had conspired to put him on the throne, and he could conspire again, this time to get rid of Michael and assume the crown himself. Basilius poured poison into Michael’s ear until the emperor agreed to have his uncle murdered. During a great horse race, Basilius closed in on Bardas in the crowd and stabbed him to death. Soon after, Basilius asked that he replace Bardas as head of the army, where he could keep control of the realm and quell rebellion. This was granted.

Now Basilius’s power and wealth only grew, and a few years later Michael, in financial straits from his own extravagance, asked him to pay back some of the money he had borrowed over the years. To Michael’s shock and astonishment, Basilius refused, with a look of such impudence that the emperor suddenly realized his predicament: The former stable boy had more money, more allies in the army and senate, and in the end more power than the emperor himself. A few weeks later, after a night of heavy drinking, Michael awoke to find himself surrounded by soldiers. Basilius watched as they stabbed the emperor to death. Then, after proclaiming himself emperor, he rode his horse through the streets of Byzantium, brandishing the head of his former benefactor and best friend at the end of a long pike.

THE SNAKE, THE FARMER, AND THE HERON

A snake chased by hunters asked a farmer to save its life. To hide it from its pursuers, the farmer squatted and let the snake crawl into his belly. But when the danger had passed and the farmer asked the snake to come out, the snake refused. It was warm and safe inside. On his way home, the man saw a heron and went up to him and whispered what had happened. The heron told him to squat and strain to eject the snake. When the snake snuck its head out, the heron caught it, pulled it out, and killed it. The farmer was worried that the snake’s poison might still be inside him, and the heron told him that the cure for snake poison was to cook and eat six white fowl. “You’re a white fowl,” said the farmer. “You’ll do for a start.” He grabbed the heron, put it in a bag, and carried it home, where he hung it up while he told his wife what had happened. “I’m surprised at you, ” said the wife. “The bird does you a kindness, rids you of the evil in your belly, saves your life in fact, yet you catch it and talk of killing it. She immediately released the heron, and it flew away. But on its way, it gouged out her eyes.

Moral: When you see water flowing uphill, it means that someone is repaying a kindness.

AFRICAN FOLK TALE

Michael III staked his future on the sense of gratitude he thought Basilius must feel for him. Surely Basilius would serve him best; he owed the emperor his wealth, his education, and his position. Then, once Basilius was in power, anything he needed it was best to give to him, strengthening the bonds between the two men. It was only on the fateful day when the emperor saw that impudent smile on Basilius’s face that he realized his deadly mistake.

He had created a monster. He had allowed a man to see power up close—a man who then wanted more, who asked for anything and got it, who felt encumbered by the charity he had received and simply did what many people do in such a situation: They forget the favors they have received and imagine they have earned their success by their own merits.

At Michael’s moment of realization, he could still have saved his own life, but friendship and love blind every man to their interests. Nobody believes a friend can betray. And Michael went on disbelieving until the day his head ended up on a pike.

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

Voltaire, 1694-1778

For several centuries after the fall of the Han Dynasty (A.D. 222), Chinese history followed the same pattern of violent and bloody coups, one after the other. Army men would plot to kill a weak emperor, then would replace him on the Dragon Throne with a strong general. The general would start a new dynasty and crown himself emperor; to ensure his own survival he would kill off his fellow generals. A few years later, however, the pattern would resume: New generals would rise up and assassinate him or his sons in their turn. To be emperor of China was to be alone, surrounded by a pack of enemies—it was the least powerful, least secure position in the realm.

In A.D. 959, General Chao K’uang-yin became Emperor Sung. He knew the odds, the probability that within a year or two he would be murdered ; how could he break the pattern? Soon after becoming emperor, Sung ordered a banquet to celebrate the new dynasty, and invited the most powerful commanders in the army. After they had drunk much wine, he dismissed the guards and everybody else except the generals, who now feared he would murder them in one fell swoop. Instead, he addressed them: “The whole day is spent in fear, and I am unhappy both at the table and in my bed. For which one of you does not dream of ascending the throne? I do not doubt your allegiance, but if by some chance your subordinates, seeking wealth and position, were to force the emperor’s yellow robe upon you in turn, how could you refuse it?” Drunk and fearing for their lives, the generals proclaimed their innocence and their loyalty. But Sung had other ideas: “The best way to pass one’s days is in peaceful enjoyment of riches and honor. If you are willing to give up your commands, I am ready to provide you with fine estates and beautiful dwellings where you may take your pleasure with singers and girls as your companions.”

The astonished generals realized that instead of a life of anxiety and struggle Sung was offering them riches and security. The next day, all of the generals tendered their resignations, and they retired as nobles to the estates that Sung bestowed on them.

There are many who think therefore that a wise prince ought, when he has the chance, to foment astutely some enmity, so that by suppressing it he will augment his greatness. Princes, and especially new ones, have found more faith and more usefulness in those men, whom at the beginning of their power they regarded with suspicion, than in those they at first confided in. Pandolfo Petrucci, prince of Siena, governed his state more by those whom he suspected than by others.

NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, 1469-1527

In one stroke, Sung turned a pack of “friendly” wolves, who would likely have betrayed him, into a group of docile lambs, far from all power.

Over the next few years Sung continued his campaign to secure his rule. In A.D. 971, King Liu of the Southern Han finally surrendered to him after years of rebellion. To Liu’s astonishment, Sung gave him a rank in the imperial court and invited him to the palace to seal their newfound friendship with wine. As King Liu took the glass that Sung offered him, he hesitated, fearing it contained poison. “Your subject’s crimes certainly merit death,” he cried out, “but I beg Your Majesty to spare your subject’s life. Indeed I dare not drink this wine.” Emperor Sung laughed, took the glass from Liu, and swallowed it himself. There was no poison. From then on Liu became his most trusted and loyal friend.

At the time, China had splintered into many smaller kingdoms. When Ch‘ien Shu, the king of one of these, was defeated, Sung’s ministers advised the emperor to lock this rebel up. They presented documents proving that he was still conspiring to kill Sung. When Ch’ien Shu came to visit the emperor, however, instead of locking him up, Sung honored him. He also gave him a package, which he told the former king to open when he was halfway home. Ch’ien Shu opened the bundle on his return journey and saw that it contained all the papers documenting his conspiracy. He realized that Sung knew of his murderous plans, yet had spared him nonetheless. This generosity won him over, and he too became one of Sung’s most loyal vassals.

A brahman, a great expert in Veda who has become a great archer as well, offers his services to his good friend, who is now the king. The brahman cries out when he sees the king, “Recognize me, your friend!” The king answers him with contempt and then explains: “Yes, we were friends before, but our friendship was based on what power we had.... I was friends with you, good brahman, because it served my purpose. No pauper is friend to the rich, no fool to the wise, no coward to the brave. An old friend—who needs him? It is two men of equal wealth and equal birth who contract friendship and marriage, not a rich man and a pauper.... An old friend—who needs him?

THE MAHABHARATA, C. THIRD CENTURY B.C.

A Chinese proverb compares friends to the jaws and teeth of a dangerous animal: If you are not careful, you will find them chewing you up. Emperor Sung knew the jaws he was passing between when he assumed the throne: His “friends” in the army would chew him up like meat, and if he somehow survived, his “friends” in the government would have him for supper. Emperor Sung would have no truck with “friends”—he bribed his fellow generals with splendid estates and kept them far away. This was a much better way to emasculate them than killing them, which would only have led other generals to seek vengeance. And Sung would have nothing to do with “friendly” ministers. More often than not, they would end up drinking his famous cup of poisoned wine.

Instead of relying on friends, Sung used his enemies, one after the other, transforming them into far more reliable subjects. 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. In time, these former enemies became Sung’s most trusted friends.

Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.

SUFI PROVERB

And Sung was finally able to break the pattern of coups, violence, and civil war—the Sung Dynasty ruled China for more than three hundred years.

In a speech Abraham Lincoln delivered at the height of the Civil War, he referred to the Southerners as fellow human beings who were in error. An elderly lady chastised him for not calling them irreconcilable enemies who must be destroyed. “Why, madam,” Lincoln replied, “do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

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. (Michael III had a man right under his nose who would have steered him right and kept him alive: That man was Bardas.)

PROFITING BY OUR ENEMIES

King Hiero chanced upon a time, speaking with one of his enemies, to be told in a reproachful manner that he had stinking breath. Whereupon the good king, being somewhat dismayed in himself, as soon as he returned home chided his wife, “How does it happen that you never told me of this problem?” The woman, being a simple, chaste. and harmless dame, said, “Sir, I had thought all men breath had smelled so.” Thus it is plain that faults that are evident to the senses, gross and corporal, or otherwise notorious to the world, we know by our enemies sooner than by our friends and familiars.

PLUTARCH, C. A.D. 46-120

All working situations require a kind of distance between people. You are trying to work, not make friends; friendliness (real or false) only obscures that fact. 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.

Your enemies, on the other hand, are an untapped gold mine that you must learn to exploit. When Talleyrand, Napoleon’s foreign minister, decided in 1807 that his boss was leading France to ruin, and the time had come to turn against him, he understood the dangers of conspiring against the emperor; he needed a partner, a confederate—what friend could he trust in such a project? He chose Joseph Fouché, head of the secret police, his most hated enemy, a man who had even tried to have him assassinated. He knew that their former hatred would create an opportunity for an emotional reconciliation. He knew that Fouché would expect nothing from him, and in fact would work to prove that he was worthy of Talleyrand’s choice; a person who has something to prove will move mountains for you. Finally, he knew that his relationship with Fouché would be based on mutual self-interest, and would not be contaminated by personal feeling. The selection proved perfect; although the conspirators did not succeed in toppling Napoleon, the union of such powerful but unlikely partners generated much interest in the cause; opposition to the emperor slowly began to spread. And from then on, Talleyrand and Fouché had a fruitful working relationship. Whenever you can, bury the hatchet with an enemy, and make a point of putting him in your service.

As Lincoln said, you destroy an enemy when you make a friend of him. In 1971, during the Vietnam War, Henry Kissinger was the target of an unsuccessful kidnapping attempt, a conspiracy involving, among others, the renowned antiwar activist priests the Berrigan brothers, four more Catholic priests, and four nuns. In private, without informing the Secret Service or the Justice Department, Kissinger arranged a Saturday-morning meeting with three of the alleged kidnappers. Explaining to his guests that he would have most American soldiers out of Vietnam by mid-1972, he completely charmed them. They gave him some “Kidnap Kissinger” buttons and one of them remained a friend of his for years, visiting him on several occasions. This was not just a onetime ploy: Kissinger made a policy of working with those who disagreed with him. Colleagues commented that he seemed to get along better with his enemies than with his friends.

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.

Mao Tse-tung saw conflict as key in his approach to power. In 1937 the Japanese invaded China, interrupting the civil war between Mao’s Communists and their enemy, the Nationalists.

Fearing that the Japanese would wipe them out, some Communist leaders advocated leaving the Nationalists to fight the Japanese, and using the time to recuperate. Mao disagreed: The Japanese could not possibly defeat and occupy a vast country like China for long. Once they left, the Communists would have grown rusty if they had been out of combat for several years, and would be ill prepared to reopen their struggle with the Nationalists. To fight a formidable foe like the Japanese, in fact, would be the perfect training for the Communists’ ragtag army. Mao’s plan was adopted, and it worked: By the time the Japanese finally retreated, the Communists had gained the fighting experience that helped them defeat the Nationalists.

Years later, a Japanese visitor tried to apologize to Mao for his country’s invasion of China. Mao interrupted, “Should I not thank you instead?” Without a worthy opponent, he explained, a man or group cannot grow stronger.

Mao’s strategy of constant conflict has several key components. First, be certain that in the long run you will emerge victorious. Never pick a fight with someone you are not sure you can defeat, as Mao knew the Japanese would be defeated in time. Second, if you have no apparent enemies, you must sometimes set up a convenient target, even turning a friend into an enemy. Mao used this tactic time and again in politics. Third, use such enemies to define your cause more clearly to the public, even framing it as a struggle of good against evil. Mao actually encouraged China’s disagreements with the Soviet Union and the United States; without clear-cut enemies, he believed, his people would lose any sense of what Chinese Communism meant. A sharply defined enemy is a far stronger argument for your side than all the words you could possibly put together.

Never let the presence of enemies upset or distress you—you are far better off with a declared opponent or two than not knowing where your real enemies lie. The man of power welcomes conflict, using enemies to enhance his reputation as a surefooted fighter who can be relied upon in times of uncertainty.

Image: The Jaws of ingratitude. Knowing what would happen if you put a finger in the mouth of a lion, you would stay clear of it. With friends you will have no such caution, and if you hire them, they will eat you alive with ingratitude.

Authority: Know how to use enemies for your own profit. You must learn to grab a sword not by its blade, which would cut you, but by the handle, which allows you to defend yourself. The wise man profits more from his enemies, than a fool from his friends. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)

Although it is generally best not to mix work with friendship, there are times when a friend can be used to greater effect than an enemy. A man of power, for example, often has dirty work that has to be done, but for the sake of appearances it is generally preferable to have other people do it for him; friends often do this the best, since their affection for him makes them willing to take chances. Also, if your plans go awry for some reason, you can use a friend as a convenient scapegoat. This “fall of the favorite” was a trick often used by kings and sovereigns: They would let their closest friend at court take the fall for a mistake, since the public would not believe that they would deliberately sacrifice a friend for such a purpose. Of course, after you play that card, you have lost your friend forever. It is best, then, to reserve the scapegoat role for someone who is close to you but not too close.

Finally, the problem about working with friends is that it confuses the boundaries and distances that working requires. But if both partners in the arrangement understand the dangers involved, a friend often can be employed to great effect. You must never let your guard down in such a venture, however; always be on the lookout for any signs of emotional disturbance such as envy and ingratitude. Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even the closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.

CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS

PART I: USE DECOYED OBJECTS OF DESIRE AND RED HERRINGS TO THROW PEOPLE OFF THE SCENT

If at any point in the deception you practice people have the slightest suspicion as to your intentions, all is lost. Do not give them the chance to sense what you are up to: Throw them off the scent by dragging red herrings across the path. Use false sincerity, send ambiguous signals, set up misleading objects of desire. Unable to distinguish the genuine from the false, they cannot pick out your real goal.

Over several weeks, Ninon de Lenclos, the most infamous courtesan of seventeenth-century France, listened patiently as the Marquis de Sevigné explained his struggles in pursuing a beautiful but difficult young countess. Ninon was sixty-two at the time, and more than experienced in matters of love; the marquis was a lad of twenty-two, handsome, dashing, but hopelessly inexperienced in romance. At first Ninon was amused to hear the marquis talk about his mistakes, but finally she had had enough. Unable to bear ineptitude in any realm, least of all in seducing a woman, she decided to take the young man under her wing. First, he had to understand that this was war, and that the beautiful countess was a citadel to which he had to lay siege as carefully as any general. Every step had to be planned and executed with the utmost attention to detail and nuance.

Instructing the marquis to start over, Ninon told him to approach the countess with a bit of distance, an air of nonchalance. The next time the two were alone together, she said, he would confide in the countess as would a friend but not a potential lover. This was to throw her off the scent. The countess was no longer to take his interest in her for granted—perhaps he was only interested in friendship.

Ninon planned ahead. Once the countess was confused, it would be time to make her jealous. At the next encounter, at a major fête in Paris, the marquis would show up with a beautiful young woman at his side. This beautiful young woman had equally beautiful friends, so that wherever the countess would now see the marquis, he would be surrounded by the most stunning young women in Paris. Not only would the countess be seething with jealousy, she would come to see the marquis as someone who was desired by others. It was hard for Ninon to make the marquis understand, but she patiently explained that a woman who is interested in a man wants to see that other women are interested in him, too. Not only does that give him instant value, it makes it all the more satisfying to snatch him from their clutches.

Once the countess was jealous but intrigued, it would be time to beguile her. On Ninon’s instructions, the marquis would fail to show up at affairs where the countess expected to see him. Then, suddenly, he would appear at salons he had never frequented before, but that the countess attended often. She would be unable to predict his moves. All of this would push her into the state of emotional confusion that is a prerequisite for successful seduction.

These moves were executed, and took several weeks. Ninon monitored the marquis’s progress: Through her network of spies, she heard how the countess would laugh a little harder at his witticisms, listen more closely to his stories. She heard that the countess was suddenly asking questions about him. Her friends told her that at social affairs the countess would often look up at the marquis, following his steps. Ninon felt certain that the young woman was falling under his spell. It was a matter of weeks now, maybe a month or two, but if all went smoothly, the citadel would fall.

A few days later the marquis was at the countess’s home. They were alone. Suddenly he was a different man: This time acting on his own impulse, rather than following Ninon’s instructions, he took the countess’s hands and told her he was in love with her. The young woman seemed confused, a reaction he did not expect. She became polite, then excused herself. For the rest of the evening she avoided his eyes, was not there to say good-night to him. The next few times he visited he was told she was not at home. When she finally admitted him again, the two felt awkward and uncomfortable with each other. The spell was broken.

Ninon de Lenclos knew everything about the art of love. The greatest writers, thinkers, and politicians of the time had been her lovers—men like La Rochefoucauld, Molière, and Richelieu. Seduction was a game to her, to be practiced with skill. As she got older, and her reputation grew, the most important families in France would send their sons to her to be instructed in matters of love.

Ninon knew that men and women are very different, but when it comes to seduction they feel the same: Deep down inside, they often sense when they are being seduced, but they give in because they enjoy the feeling of being led along. It is a pleasure to let go, and to allow the other person to detour you into a strange country. Everything in seduction, however, depends on suggestion. You cannot announce your intentions or reveal them directly in words. Instead you must throw your targets off the scent. To surrender to your guidance they must be appropriately confused. You have to scramble your signals—appear interested in another man or woman (the decoy), then hint at being interested in the target, then feign indifference, on and on. Such patterns not only confuse, they excite.

Imagine this story from the countess’s perspective: After a few of the marquis’s moves, she sensed the marquis was playing some sort of game, but the game delighted her. She did not know where he was leading her, but so much the better. 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. Perhaps the marquis had ulterior motives; most men do. But she was willing to wait and see, and probably if she had been made to wait long enough, what he was up to would not have mattered.

The moment the marquis uttered that fatal word “love,” however, all was changed. This was no longer a game with moves, it was an artless show of passion. His intention was revealed: He was seducing her. This put everything he had done in a new light. All that before had been charming now seemed ugly and conniving; the countess felt embarrassed and used. A door closed that would never open again.

Do not be held a cheat, even though it is impossible to live today without being one. Let your greatest cunning lie in covering up what looks like cunning. Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658

In 1850 the young Otto von Bismarck, then a thirty-five-year-old deputy in the Prussian parliament, was at a turning point in his career. The issues of the day were the unification of the many states (including Prussia) into which Germany was then divided, and a war against Austria, the powerful neighbor to the south that hoped to keep the Germans weak and at odds, even threatening to intervene if they tried to unite. Prince William, next in line to be Prussia’s king, was in favor of going to war, and the parliament rallied to the cause, prepared to back any mobilization of troops. The only ones to oppose war were the present king, Frederick William IV, and his ministers, who preferred to appease the powerful Austrians.

Throughout his career, Bismarck had been a loyal, even passionate supporter of Prussian might and power. He dreamed of German unification, of going to war against Austria and humiliating the country that for so long had kept Germany divided. A former soldier, he saw warfare as a glorious business.

This, after all, was the man who years later would say, “The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions, but by iron and blood.”

Passionate patriot and lover of military glory, Bismarck nevertheless gave a speech in parliament at the height of the war fever that astonished all who heard it. “Woe unto the statesman,” he said, “who makes war without a reason that will still be valid when the war is over! After the war, you will all look differently at these questions. Will you then have the courage to turn to the peasant contemplating the ashes of his farm, to the man who has been crippled, to the father who has lost his children?” Not only did Bismarck go on to talk of the madness of this war, but, strangest of all, he praised Austria and defended her actions. This went against everything he had stood for. The consequences were immediate. Bismarck was against the war—what could this possibly mean? Other deputies were confused, and several of them changed their votes. Eventually the king and his ministers won out, and war was averted.

A few weeks after Bismarck’s infamous speech, the king, grateful that he had spoken for peace, made him a cabinet minister. A few years later he became the Prussian premier. In this role he eventually led his country and a peace-loving king into a war against Austria, crushing the former empire and establishing a mighty German state, with Prussia at its head.

At the time of his speech in 1850, Bismarck made several calculations. First, he sensed that the Prussian military, which had not kept pace with other European armies, was unready for war—that Austria, in fact, might very well win, a disastrous result for the future. Second, if the war were lost and Bismarck had supported it, his career would be gravely jeopardized. The king and his conservative ministers wanted peace; Bismarck wanted power. The answer was to throw people off the scent by supporting a cause he detested, saying things he would laugh at if said by another. A whole country was fooled. It was because of Bismarck’s speech that the king made him a minister, a position from which he quickly rose to be prime minister, attaining the power to strengthen the Prussian military and accomplish what he had wanted all along: the humiliation of Austria and the unification of Germany under Prussia’s leadership.

Bismarck was certainly one of the cleverest statesman who ever lived, a master of strategy and deception. No one suspected what he was up to in this case. Had he announced his real intentions, arguing that it was better to wait now and fight later, he would not have won the argument, since most Prussians wanted war at that moment and mistakenly believed that their army was superior to the Austrians. Had he played up to the king, asking to be made a minister in exchange for supporting peace, he would not have succeeded either: The king would have distrusted his ambition and doubted his sincerity.

By being completely insincere and sending misleading signals, however, he deceived everyone, concealed his purpose, and attained everything he wanted. Such is the power of hiding your intentions.

Most people are open books. They say what they feel, blurt out their opinions at every opportunity, and constantly reveal their plans and intentions. They do this for several reasons. First, it is easy and natural to always want to talk about one’s feelings and plans for the future. It takes effort to control your tongue and monitor what you reveal. 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 you yearn for power, quickly lay honesty aside, and train yourself in the art of concealing your intentions. Master the art and you will always have the upper hand. Basic to an ability to conceal one’s intentions is a simple truth about human nature: Our first instinct is to always trust appearances. We cannot go around doubting the reality of what we see and hear—constantly imagining that appearances concealed something else would exhaust and terrify us. This fact makes it relatively easy to conceal one’s intentions. Simply dangle an object you seem to desire, a goal you seem to aim for, in front of people’s eyes and they will take the appearance for reality. Once their eyes focus on the decoy, they will fail to notice what you are really up to. In seduction, set up conflicting signals, such as desire and indifference, and you not only throw them off the scent, you inflame their desire to possess you.

A tactic that is often effective in setting up a red herring is to appear to support an idea or cause that is actually contrary to your own sentiments. (Bismarck used this to great effect in his speech in 1850.) Most people will believe you have experienced a change of heart, since it is so unusual to play so lightly with something as emotional as one’s opinions and values. The same applies for any decoyed object of desire: Seem to want something in which you are actually not at all interested and your enemies will be thrown off the scent, making all kinds of errors in their calculations.

During the War of the Spanish Succession in 1711, the Duke of Marlborough, head of the English army, wanted to destroy a key French fort, because it protected a vital thoroughfare into France. Yet he knew that if he destroyed it, the French would realize what he wanted—to advance down that road. Instead, then, he merely captured the fort, and garrisoned it with some of his troops, making it appear as if he wanted it for some purpose of his own. The French attacked the fort and the duke let them recapture it. Once they had it back, though, they destroyed it, figuring that the duke had wanted it for some important reason. Now that the fort was gone, the road was unprotected, and Marlborough could easily march into France.

Use this tactic in the following manner: Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: You appear friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.

Another powerful tool in throwing people off the scent is false sincerity. People easily mistake sincerity for honesty. Remember—their first instinct is to trust appearances, and since they value honesty and want to believe in the honesty of those around them, they will rarely doubt you or see through your act. Seeming to believe what you say gives your words great weight. This is how Iago deceived and destroyed Othello: Given the depth of his emotions, the apparent sincerity of his concerns about Desde mona’s supposed infidelity, how could Othello distrust him? This is also how the great con artist Yellow Kid Weil pulled the wool over suckers’ eyes: Seeming to believe so deeply in the decoyed object he was dangling in front of them (a phony stock, a touted racehorse), he made its reality hard to doubt. It is important, of course, not to go too far in this area. Sincerity is a tricky tool: Appear overpassionate and you raise suspicions. Be measured and believable or your ruse will seem the put-on that it is.

To make your false sincerity an effective weapon in concealing your intentions, espouse a belief in honesty and forthrightness as important social values. Do this as publicly as possible. Emphasize your position on this subject by occasionally divulging some heartfelt thought—though only one that is actually meaningless or irrelevant, of course. Napoleon’s minister Talleyrand was a master at taking people into his confidence by revealing some apparent secret. This feigned confidence—a decoy—would then elicit a real confidence on the other person’s part.

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.

PART II: USE SMOKE SCREENS TO DISGUISE YOUR ACTIONS

Deception is always the best strategy, but the best deceptions require a screen of smoke to distract people attention from your real purpose. The bland exterior—like the unreadable poker face—is often the perfect smoke screen, hiding your intentions behind the comfortable and familiar. If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won’t catch on when you lead him into a trap.

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW I

In 1910, a Mr. Sam Geezil of Chicago sold his warehouse business for close to $1 million. He settled down to semiretirement and the managing of his many properties, but deep inside he itched for the old days of deal-making. One day a young man named Joseph Weil visited his office, wanting to buy an apartment he had up for sale. Geezil explained the terms: The price was $8,000, but he only required a down payment of $2,000. Weil said he would sleep on it, but he came back the following day and offered to pay the full $8,000 in cash, if Geezil could wait a couple of days, until a deal Weil was working on came through. Even in semiretirement, a clever businessman like Geezil was curious as to how Weil would be able to come up with so much cash (roughly $150,000 today) so quickly. Weil seemed reluctant to say, and quickly changed the subject, but Geezil was persistent. Finally, after assurances of confidentiality, Weil told Geezil the following story.

JEHU, KING OF ISRAEL FEIGNS WORSHIP OF THE IDOL BA’AL

Then Jehu assembled all the people, and said to them, “Ahab served Ba‘al a little; but Jehu will serve him much more. Now therefore call to me all the prophets of Ba’al, all his worshippers and all his priests; let none be missing, for I have a great sacrifice to offer to Ba‘al; whoever is missing shall not live.” But Jehu did it with cunning in order to destroy the worshippers of Ba’al. And Jehu ordered, “Sanctify a solemn assembly for Ba‘al. “So they proclaimed it. And Jehu sent throughout all Israel; and all the worshippers of Ba’al came, so that there was not a man left who did not come. And they entered the house of Ba‘al, and the house of Ba’al was filled from one end to the other.... Then Jehu went into the house of Ba‘al ... and he said to the worshippers of Ba’al, “Search, and see that there is no servant of the LORD here among you, but only the worshippers of Ba‘al.“Then he went in to offer sacrifices and burnt offerings. Now Jehu had stationed eighty men outside, and said, “The man who allows any of those whom I give into your hands to escape shall forfeit his life.” So as soon as he had made an end of offering the burnt offering, Jehu said to the guard and to the officers, “Go in and slay them; let not a man escape.” So when they put them to the sword, the guard and the officers cast them out and went into the inner room of the house of Ba’al and they brought out the pillar that was in the house of Ba‘al and burned it. And they demolished the pillar of Ba’al and demolished the house of Ba‘al, and made it a latrine to this day. Thus Jehu wiped out Ba’al from Israel.

OLD TESTAMENT, 2 KINGS 10:18-28

Weil’s uncle was the secretary to a coterie of multimillionaire financiers. These wealthy gentlemen had purchased a hunting lodge in Michigan ten years ago, at a cheap price. They had not used the lodge for a few years, so they had decided to sell it and had asked Weil’s uncle to get whatever he could for it. For reasons—good reasons—of his own, the uncle had been nursing a grudge against the millionaires for years; this was his chance to get back at them. He would sell the property for $35,000 to a set up man (whom it was Weil’s job to find). The financiers were too wealthy to worry about this low price. The set-up man would then turn around and sell the property again for its real price, around $155,000. The uncle, Weil, and the third man would split the profits from this second sale. It was all legal and for a good cause—the uncle’s just retribution.

Geezil had heard enough: He wanted to be the set-up buyer. Weil was reluctant to involve him, but Geezil would not back down: The idea of a large profit, plus a little adventure, had him champing at the bit. Weil explained that Geezil would have to put up the $35,000 in cash to bring the deal off. Geezil, a millionaire, said he could get the money with a snap of his fingers. Weil finally relented and agreed to arrange a meeting between the uncle, Geezil, and the financiers, in the town of Galesburg, Illinois.

On the train ride to Galesburg, Geezil met the uncle—an impressive man, with whom he avidly discussed business. Weil also brought along a companion, a somewhat paunchy man named George Gross. Weil explained to Geezil that he himself was a boxing trainer, that Gross was one of the promising prizefighters he trained, and that he had asked Gross to come along to make sure the fighter stayed in shape. For a promising fighter, Gross was unimpressive looking—he had gray hair and a beer belly—but Geezil was so excited about the deal that he didn’t really think about the man’s flabby appearance.

Once in Galesburg, Weil and his uncle went to fetch the financiers while Geezil waited in a hotel room with Gross, who promptly put on his boxing trunks. As Geezil half watched, Gross began to shadowbox. Distracted as he was, Geezil ignored how badly the boxer wheezed after a few minutes of exercise, although his style seemed real enough. An hour later, Weil and his uncle reappeared with the financiers, an impressive, intimidating group of men, all wearing fancy suits. The meeting went well and the financiers agreed to sell the lodge to Geezil, who had already had the $35,000 wired to a local bank.

This minor business now settled, the financiers sat back in their chairs and began to banter about high finance, throwing out the name “J. P. Morgan” as if they knew the man. Finally one of them noticed the boxer in the corner of the room. Weil explained what he was doing there. The financier countered that he too had a boxer in his entourage, whom he named. Weil laughed brazenly and exclaimed that his man could easily knock out their man. Conversation escalated into argument. In the heat of passion, Weil challenged the men to a bet. The financiers eagerly agreed and left to get their man ready for a fight the next day.

As soon as they had left, the uncle yelled at Weil, right in front of Geezil; They did not have enough money to bet with, and once the financiers discovered this, the uncle would be fired. Weil apologized for getting him in this mess, but he had a plan: He knew the other boxer well, and with a little bribe, they could fix the fight. But where would the money come from for the bet? the uncle replied. Without it they were as good as dead. Finally Geezil had heard enough. Unwilling to jeopardize his deal with any ill will, he offered his own $35,000 cash for part of the bet. Even if he lost that, he would wire for more money and still make a profit on the sale of the lodge. The uncle and nephew thanked him. With their own $15,000 and Geezil’s $35,000 they would manage to have enough for the bet. That evening, as Geezil watched the two boxers rehearse the fix in the hotel room, his mind reeled at the killing he was going to make from both the boxing match and the sale of the lodge.

The fight took place in a gym the next day. Weil handled the cash, which was placed for security in a locked box. Everything was proceeding as planned in the hotel room. The financiers were looking glum at how badly their fighter was doing, and Geezil was dreaming about the easy money he was about to make. Then, suddenly, a wild swing by the financier’s fighter hit Gross hard in the face, knocking him down. When he hit the canvas, blood spurted from his mouth. He coughed, then lay still. One of the financiers, a former doctor, checked his pulse; he was dead. The millionaires panicked: Everyone had to get out before the police arrived-they could all be charged with murder.

Terrified, Geezil hightailed it out of the gym and back to Chicago, leaving behind his $35,000 which he was only too glad to forget, for it seemed a small price to pay to avoid being implicated in a crime. He never wanted to see Weil or any of the others again.

After Geezil scurried out, Gross stood up, under his own steam. The blood that had spurted from his mouth came from a ball filled with chicken blood and hot water that he had hidden in his cheek. The whole affair had been masterminded by Weil, better known as “the Yellow Kid,” one of the most creative con artists in history. Weil split the $35,000 with the financiers and the boxers (all fellow con artists)—a nice little profit for a few days’ work.

SNEAK ACROSS THE OCEAN IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

This means to create a front that eventually becomes imbued with an atmosphere or impression of familiarity, within which the strategist may maneuver unseen while all eyes are trained to see obvious familiarities. “THE THIRTY-SIX STRATEGIES.” QUOTED IN THE JAPANESE ART OF WAR.

THOMAS CLEARY, 1991

The Yellow Kid had staked out Geezil as the perfect sucker long before he set up the con. He knew the boxing-match scam would be the perfect ruse to separate Geezil from his money quickly and definitively. But he also knew that if he had begun by trying to interest Geezil in the boxing match, he would have failed miserably. He had to conceal his intentions and switch attention, create a smoke screen—in this case the sale of the lodge.

On the train ride and in the hotel room Geezil’s mind had been completely occupied with the pending deal, the easy money, the chance to hobnob with wealthy men. He had failed to notice that Gross was out of shape and middle-aged at best. Such is the distracting power of a smoke screen. Engrossed in the business deal, Geezil’s attention was easily diverted to the boxing match, but only at a point when it was already too late for him to notice the details that would have given Gross away. The match, after all, now depended on a bribe rather than on the boxer’s physical condition. And Geezil was so distracted at the end by the illusion of the boxer’s death that he completely forgot about his money.

Learn from the Yellow Kid: The familiar, inconspicuous front is the perfect smoke screen. Approach your mark with an idea that seems ordinary enough—a business deal, financial intrigue. The sucker’s mind is distracted, his suspicions allayed. That is when you gently guide him onto the second path, the slippery slope down which he slides helplessly into your trap.

OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW II

In the mid-1920s, the powerful warlords of Ethiopia were coming to the realization that a young man of the nobility named Haile Selassie, also known as Ras Tafari, was outcompeting them all and nearing the point where he could proclaim himself their leader, unifying the country for the first time in decades. Most of his rivals could not understand how this wispy, quiet, mild-mannered man had been able to take control. Yet in 1927, Selassie was able to summon the warlords, one at a time, to come to Addis Ababa to declare their loyalty and recognize him as leader.

Some hurried, some hesitated, but only one, Dejazmach Balcha of Sidamo, dared defy Selassie totally. A blustery man, Balcha was a great warrior, and he considered the new leader weak and unworthy. He pointedly stayed away from the capital. Finally Selassie, in his gentle but stem way, commanded Balcha to come. The warlord decided to obey, but in doing so he would turn the tables on this pretender to the Ethiopian throne: He would come to Addis Ababa at his own speed, and with an army of 10,000 men, a force large enough to defend himself, perhaps even start a civil war. Stationing this formidable force in a valley three miles from the capital, he waited, as a king would. Selassie would have to come to him.

Selassie did indeed send emissaries, asking Balcha to attend an afternoon banquet in his honor. But Balcha, no fool, knew history—he knew that previous kings and lords of Ethiopia had used banquets as a trap. Once he was there and full of drink, Selassie would have him arrested or murdered. To signal his understanding of the situation, he agreed to come to the banquet, but only if he could bring his personal bodyguard—600 of his best soldiers, all armed and ready to defend him and themselves. To Balcha’s surprise, Selassie answered with the utmost politeness that he would be honored to play host to such warriors.

On the way to the banquet, Balcha warned his soldiers not to get drunk and to be on their guard. When they arrived at the palace, Selassie was his charming best. He deferred to Balcha, treated him as if he desperately needed his approval and cooperation. But Balcha refused to be charmed, and he warned Selassie that if he did not return to his camp by nightfall, his army had orders to attack the capital. Selassie reacted as if hurt by his mistrust. Over the meal, when it came time for the traditional singing of songs in honor of Ethiopia’s leaders, he made a point of allowing only songs honoring the warlord of Sidamo. It seemed to Balcha that Selassie was scared, intimidated by this great warrior who could not be outwitted. Sensing the change, Balcha believed that he would be the one to call the shots in the days to come.

At the end of the afternoon, Balcha and his soldiers began their march back to camp amidst cheers and gun salutes. Looking back to the capital over his shoulder, he planned his strategy—how his own soldiers would march through the capital in triumph within weeks, and Selassie would be put in his place, his place being either prison or death. When Balcha came in sight of his camp, however, he saw that something was terribly wrong. Where before there had been colorful tents stretching as far as the eye could see, now there was nothing, only smoke from doused fires. What devil’s magic was this?

A witness told Balcha what had happened. During the banquet, a large army, commanded by an ally of Selassie’s, had stolen up on Balcha’s encampment by a side route he had not seen. This army had not come to fight, however: Knowing that Balcha would have heard a noisy battle and hurried back with his 600-man bodyguard, Selassie had armed his own troops with baskets of gold and cash. They had surrounded Balcha’s army and proceeded to purchase every last one of their weapons. Those who refused were easily intimidated. Within a few hours, Balcha’s entire force had been disarmed and scattered in all directions.

Realizing his danger, Balcha decided to march south with his 600 soldiers to regroup, but the same army that had disarmed his soldiers blocked his way. The other way out was to march on the capital, but Selassie had set a large army to defend it. Like a chess player, he had predicted Balcha’s moves, and had checkmated him. For the first time in his life, Balcha surrendered. To repent his sins of pride and ambition, he agreed to enter a monastery.

Throughout Selassie’s long reign, no one could quite figure him out. Ethiopians like their leaders fierce, but Selassie, who wore the front of a gentle, peace-loving man, lasted longer than any of them. Never angry or impatient, he lured his victims with sweet smiles, lulling them with charm and obsequiousness before he attacked. In the case of Balcha, Selassie played on the man’s wariness, his suspicion that the banquet was a trap—which in fact it was, but not the one he expected. Selassie’s way of allaying Balcha’s fears—letting him bring his bodyguard to the banquet, giving him top billing there, making him feel in control—created a thick smoke screen, concealing the real action three miles away.

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. A helpful or apparently honest gesture, or one that implies the other person’s superiority—these are perfect diversionary devices.

Properly set up, the smoke screen is a weapon of great power. It enabled the gentle Selassie to totally destroy his enemy, without firing a single bullet.

Do not underestimate the power of Tafari. He creeps like a mouse but he has jaws like a lion. Bacha of Sidamo’s last words before entering the monastery

If you believe that deceivers are colorful folk who mislead with elaborate lies and tall tales, you are greatly mistaken. The best deceivers utilize a bland and inconspicuous front that calls no attention to themselves. They know that extravagant words and gestures immediately raise suspicion. Instead, they envelop their mark in the familiar, the banal, the harmless. In Yellow Kid Weil’s dealings with Sam Geezil, the familiar was a business deal. In the Ethiopian case, it was Selassie’s misleading obsequiousness—exactly what Balcha would have expected from a weaker warlord.

Once you have lulled your suckers’ attention with the familiar, they will not notice the deception being perpetrated behind their backs. This derives from a simple truth: people can only focus on one thing at a time. It is really too difficult for them to imagine that the bland and harmless person they are dealing with is simultaneously setting up something else. The grayer and more uniform the smoke in your smoke screen, the better it conceals your intentions. In the decoy and red herring devices discussed in Part I, you actively distract people; in the smoke screen, you lull your victims, drawing them into your web. Because it is so hypnotic, this is often the best way of concealing your intentions.

The simplest form of smoke screen is facial expression. Behind a bland, unreadable exterior, all sorts of mayhem can be planned, without detection. This is a weapon that the most powerful men in history have learned to perfect. It was said that no one could read Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face. Baron James Rothschild made a lifelong practice of disguising his real thoughts behind bland smiles and nondescript looks. Stendhal wrote of Talleyrand, “Never was a face less of a barometer.” Henry Kissinger would bore his opponents around the negotiating table to tears with his monotonous voice, his blank look, his endless recitations of details; then, as their eyes glazed over, he would suddenly hit them with a list of bold terms. Caught off-guard, they would be easily intimidated. As one poker manual explains it, “While playing his hand, the good player is seldom an actor. Instead he practices a bland behavior that minimizes readable patterns, frustrates and confuses opponents, permits greater concentration.”

An adaptable concept, the smoke screen can be practiced on a number of levels, all playing on the psychological principles of distraction and misdirection. One of the most effective smoke screens is the noble gesture. People want to believe apparently noble gestures are genuine, for the belief is pleasant. They rarely notice how deceptive these gestures can be.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; First Edition (September 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 452 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0140280197
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0140280197
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
Grade level ‏ : ‎ 12 and up
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.64 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
#1 in History & Theory of Politics
#1 in Success Self-Help
#4 in Popular Social Psychology & Interactions

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About the authors

Robert Greene is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law. His highly anticipated fifth book, Mastery, examines the lives of great historical figures such as Charles Darwin, Mozart, Paul Graham and Henry Ford and distills the traits and universal ingredients that made them masters. In addition to having a strong following within the business world and a deep following in Washington, DC, Greene’s books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest musicians in the industry (including Jay-Z and 50 Cent).

Greene attended U.C. Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a degree in classical studies. He currently lives in Los Angeles.

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Book Review: The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

This post may contain affiliate links, which means I’ll receive a commission if you purchase through my links, at no extra cost to you. Please read full disclosure for more information.

Title: The 48 Laws of Power
Author: Robert Greene
About the author: Robert Greene is a renowned author who has produced multiple New York Times bestsellers (books shared below in summary). His books have reached millions of people across the globe. Greene attended U.C. Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he received a degree in classical studies. Through his books, you can see that he puts his degree to use.
Published: 2000
Link to book

High-Level Summary

The 48 Laws of Power is a multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller, written by Robert Greene. Robert Greene has written several other popular books including The Laws of Human Nature , Mastery , The Art of Seduction , The 33 Strategies of War , and The 50th Law .

By far, his most popular book is The 48 Laws of Power . It is a book that is recommended by nearly anyone in the business & entrepreneurship fields. Its wild popularity comes from a mix of Robert Greene’s genius writing and the fact that humans naturally want power.

Greene states in the Preface, “The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally unbearable to us—when we feel helpless we feel miserable.” He mentions how no one wants less power; everyone wants more power.

Thus, he wrote The 48 Laws of Power as a “handbook on the arts of indirection.” The 48 laws come from wisdom gathered from individuals spanning over 3,000 years of history. These individuals include strategists (Sun-tzu, Clausewitz), statesmen (Bismarck, Talleyrand), courtiers (Castiglione, Gracián), seducers (Ninon de Lenclos, Casanova), and con artists (“Yellow Kid” Weil).

The book will explain, through its laws, that certain actions almost always increase one’s power, while others decrease power or ultimately ruin it.

A focus of the text, and essential to gaining power, is that power is a social game. To learn and master the game, it’s essential that you develop the ability to study and understand people. You need empathy to understand what others may be thinking, wanting, plotting, and feeling.

According to Greene, the most important skill to have, which is foundational to power, is the ability to master your own emotions. He writes, “An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power.”

The 48 laws have a Machiavellian theme to them, characterized by words like cunning, sneaky, scheming, and cutthroat. This doesn’t mean that you have to embody these traits, but the game of power requires a shift of perspective and a different way of looking at the world.

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Recommendation.

If you are interested in gaining, observing, or defending against power, this book is for you.

Robert Greene wrote a fantastic book that is thought-provoking, entertaining, and instructive. By reading this book, you’ll not only have guidance on how to acquire power, but you will know how to spot power tactics and defend yourself against those trying to overpower or deceive you.

These are valuable skills to have for your life and career.

Top 30 Takeaways

* In no particular order

1. It’s dangerous to seem too power-hungry in today’s world. So we need to be subtle. Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair. Power moves need to be made indirectly.

2. Those who claim to be nonplayers may affect an air of naïveté, to protect them from the accusation that they are after power. You can recognize these supposed nonplayers by the way they flaunt their moral qualities, their piety, their exquisite sense of justice.

3. 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.

4. 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. Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most.

5. Power requires the ability to play with appearances. You must learn to wear many masks and keep a bag full of deceptive tricks.

6. Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do not do, what you do not allow yourself to get dragged into.

7. Power is a social game. To learn and master it, you must develop the ability to study and understand people.

8. Consider The 48 Laws of Power a kind of handbook on the arts of indirection.

9. Law 1 – Never Outshine the Master: Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear, resentment, and insecurity. All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.

10. Law 2 – Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies: Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels. Without enemies around us, we grow lazy.

11. Law 3 – Conceal Your Intentions: 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. It takes effort to control your tongue and monitor what you reveal.

12. Law 4 – Always Say Less Than Necessary: Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish. In most areas of life, the less you say, the more profound and mysterious you appear.

13. Law 5 – So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it With Your Life: Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. As they say, your reputation inevitably precedes you.

14. Law 9 – Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument: It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

15. Law 10 – Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky: In the game of power, the people you associate with are critical. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

16. Law 11 – Learn to Keep People Dependent On You: To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

17. Law 13 – When Asking For Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude: If you need to turn to an ally for help, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. Instead, uncover something in your request that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion.

18. Law 16 – Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor: Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.

19. Law 19 – Know Who You’re Dealing With: There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. The ability to measure people and to know who you’re dealing with is the most important skill of all in gathering and conserving power.

20. Law 23 – Concentrate Your Forces: Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. Intensity defeats extensity every time. The mind must not wander from goal to goal, or be distracted by success from its sense of purpose and proportion.

21. Law 24 – Play the Perfect Courtier: The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

22. Law 25 – Re-Create Yourself: Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you. Working on yourself like clay should be one of your greatest and most pleasurable life tasks.

23. Law 29 – Plan All The Way to the End: The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop.

24. Law 32 – Play To People’s Fantasies: The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them.

25. Law 35 – Master the Art of Timing: Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

26. Law 38 – Think As Your Like But Behave Like Others: It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness. Image: The Black Sheep. The herd shuns the black sheep, uncertain whether or not it belongs with them.

27. Law 41 – Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes: What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them.

28. Law 43 – Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others: You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. The key to persuasion is softening people up and breaking them down, gently.

29. Law 46 – Never Appear Too Perfect: Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable.

30. Law 48 – Assume Formlessness: By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water. Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.

What I Liked

Machiavellian way of looking seeing things
Uses a sprawling variety of stories from history
Quotes, parables, and metaphors provide additional context and entertainment
Prescriptive, handbook-style writing in “Keys to Power” sections
Provides reversals to each law at the end of the chapters

Benefits To Your Life and Career

48 tools to use in the game of power.

With this handbook you have, you essentially have over 48 tools to use in the game of power. You may not remember all 48 at any given time, but hopefully you’ll internalize most of them.

Any time you find yourself in a situation where power is being played, you can refer back to this book. A refresher can help you identify the elements at play and the lessons can show you how taking one path or another may go.

Just as good for defense as it is for offense: Acquire power and stay in power

The 48 Laws of Power isn’t just a book all about offense. This book is about defense too. Sure, you’ll learn how to acquire power, but will you keep it? Many will argue that staying in power is what’s hard. Robert Greene will point out what you can do and what pitfalls you should avoid.

Additionally, you’ll be able to defend yourself when power tactics are being used against you. They’ll catch your eye and you’ll see right through the individual. This happens all the time in your professional life. You can’t be naïve to it.

The 48 Laws of Power can be found on Amazon at this link here if you are interested in reading.

About Post Author

Brandon Hill

I’m Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

See author's posts

I'm Brandon Hill with Bizness Professionals. We serve content to help young professionals develop personally, professionally, and financially. Well-rounded improvement is a theme we live by. As such, this website will cover a variety of topics aimed to help you have a successful life and career.

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Thoughts on 48 Laws of Power? : r/books
The book is divided into 48 chapters, each covers a different "Law of Power," which is what you must do to obtain power. In each chapter Greene explains the law and then gives several historical examples of people following and breaking the particular law of power. The book really shines in this department.
How do you guys feel about the 48 laws of power? : r/books
However, the main weakness of the book is that it is based on historical example instead of any empirical evidence. The 48 Laws of Power is good as a starter, but any deep understanding of power will need broader research. I sort of view it as the fulfillment of an old joke. An entrepreneur puts out an ad for his patented new process that will ...
Has anyone read that book "The 48 Laws of Power"? I started ...
The 48 Laws of Power is one of my favourite books of all time. Coincidentally, I believe that taking it with anything nearing seriousness, let alone the fervor you describe your ex following it with, is utterly insane. ... I think the reviews of The 48 Laws of Power that describe the book as 'unethical' or 'disturbing' or 'popular with ...
The 48 Laws Of Power. Book Review
In this chapter, Greene explores the darker side of friendships and cautions against being too naive or transparent with our confidences. Shared through historical anecdotes and tales of treachery ...
"The 48 Laws of Power": An In-depth Exploration and Summary
Robert Greene's "The 48 Laws of Power" has left an indelible mark on readers, igniting debates about its merit and ethical implications. In this comprehensive review, we dissect the book's ...
The 48 Laws of Power Book Review on Quora
The 48 Laws of Power Book Review on Quora. Are you looking for a thought-provoking and insightful book that delves into the intricate dynamics of power and human behavior? Look no further than "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene. This book has sparked numerous discussions on Quora and has garnered a loyal following of readers who are ...
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
5- Review. "The 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene is nothing short of a cerebral rollercoaster through the intricate web of human dynamics. From the outset, Greene captivates with his exploration of power, drawing on historical examples that range from the cunning to the ruthless. The book's allure lies in its unapologetic confrontation of the ...
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control - from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed "beguiling" and "fascinating," Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand ...
A Review of 48 Laws of Power: Is it Worth the Read?
Take A Look At The List Of Laws: The 48 Laws of Power. 1. Never Outshine the Master. This law is all about understanding the importance of being aware of your place. Never attempt to outshine or be better than those in positions of power, such as your boss or supervisor.
THE 48 LAWS OF POWER
THE 48 LAWS OF POWER. by Robert Greene ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1998. If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it's a brilliant satire. The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power. Everyone wants power and everyone is in a ...
The 48 Laws of Power: Summary Review & Takeaways
This is a summary review of The 48 Laws of Power containing key details about the book. What is The 48 Laws of Power About? Drawn from 3,000 years of the history of power, The 48 Laws of Power is a guide to help readers achieve for themselves what many powerful leaders learned the hard […]
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The 48 Laws of Power. Robert Greene. 4.15. 128,093 ratings 7,039 reviews. Want to read. Kindle $16.99. Rate this book. Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, ... from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that ...
Why is the "48 Laws of power" often criticized? : r/books
The laws are contradictory at times, because what works in one situation in real life usually doesn't work in all situations, hence the "reversals" in each chapter, and the 48th law being "assume formlesness": adapt constantly and have an open outlook on life, let your beliefs be challenged, etc. Reply reply.
The 48 Laws of Power: A Comprehensive Review
The 48 Laws of Power is a classic book on the art of manipulation and strategy. In this comprehensive review, we explore the key principles and tactics outlined in the book, and how they can be applied in various contexts. From mastering the art of timing to cultivating an air of mystery, these laws offer valuable insights into the dynamics of power and influence.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene Summary (2024)
2 The 48 Laws of Power List. 3 The 48 Laws of Power Summary. Law 1. Never Outshine the Master. Law 2. Never Put Too Much Trust in Friends, Learn How to Use Enemies. Law 3. Conceal Your Intentions. Law 4.
48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others—playing people against one another, making them pursue you. Part 1: Do not commit to anyone, but be courted by all. Stay aloof and gain the power that comes from attention and frustrated desire. Part 2: Do not commit to anyone - stay above the fray.
How have the 48 Laws Of Power helped you? : r/The48LawsOfPower
Good wins only in fairy tales - The book convinced me of this. It has confirmed what I and most people have already known. Common sense. I already know most of the stuff. I guess it helped me to memorize the rules. 25 votes, 37 comments. 50K subscribers in the The48LawsOfPower community. The Official Discussions of The 48 Laws of Power as well ...
The 48 Laws of Power: Greene, Robert: 8601400945018: Amazon.com: Books
The 48 Laws of Power. Paperback - September 1, 2000. Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control - from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine ...
Book review: The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. For leaders looking to climb the corporate ladder and gain influence within their organisation, The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene offers strategic lessons drawn from examining how power has been cultivated and wielded throughout history. The book distills centuries of observations on mastering the art ...
Book Review: The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The 48 Laws of Power is a multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller, written by Robert Greene. Robert Greene has written several other popular books including The Laws of Human Nature, Mastery, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, and The 50th Law.. By far, his most popular book is The 48 Laws of Power.It is a book that is recommended by nearly anyone in the business ...
Best The 48 Laws Of Power Posts
Disrupt others' plans (Laws 8, 28, 39 ) Be patient and play the long game (Laws 22, 29, 35 ). Be rational, not emotional (Laws 2, 39, 47 ). Don't get distracted (Laws 36, 40 ) Power sometimes requires a big show of force (Laws 15, 23, 28) but usually, it is better to be subtle and indirect (Laws 11, 24, 31, 43, 44 ).
thelizard024 (@thelizard024)'s videos with 48 Laws of Power" by Robert
396 Likes, TikTok video from thelizard024 (@thelizard024): "". 48 Laws of Power" by Robert Greene: Mastering the 48 Laws of Power (Book Review & Summary) - FinanciallyFit.
What's the 49th law of power? : r/The48LawsOfPower
The 49th law of power is a book written by Mitchell 'Banknote Mitch' Similton. Bridging the gap between Robert Greene's 48 laws of power & Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson's The 50th Law. It's co-signed by Robert Greene himself. 49:Keep emotions under control.