Author – Robert Greene

Prince – Machiavelli
Baltasar Gracián

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

Treating everyone equally means ignoring their differences, elevating the less skillful, and suppressing those who excel. →It is blasphemous and almost sinful to treat everyone with equality.

The only means to gain one’s ends with people are force and cunning.

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. →Control your emotions and you will control your fate.

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

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

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

Certain actions almost always increase one’s power, while others decrease it and even ruin us.

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 heights of power.

💎When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.

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 an inferior superior.

Never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want.

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

You must flatter and puff up your master.

Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naïve. 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.

Your ideas ascribe them to him, in as public a manner as possible. →Publicly give him all credit to your own ideas.

You must be selectively cruel.

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.

Nobody believes a friend can betray.

💭“Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.” – Sufi proverb

💭“Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?” – Abraham Lincoln

💭“Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.” – Tacitus

Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
→The key to power is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations.

💡 Your enemies are an untapped gold mine that you must learn to exploit.
→Whenever you can, bury the hatchet with an enemy, and make a point of putting him in your service.

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.

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 of 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, and set up misleading objects of desire. Unable to distinguish the genuine from the false, they cannot pick out your real goal.

If you yearn for power, quickly lay honesty aside, and train yourself in the art of concealing your intentions.

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’s 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.

The simplest form of a smoke screen is facial expression. Behind a bland, unreadable exterior.

It takes patience and humility to dull your brilliant colors, to put on the mask of the inconspicuous. Do not despair at having to wear such a bland mask, it is often your unreadability that draws people to you and makes you appear a person of power.

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. Stop talking.

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

Power cannot accrue to those who squander their treasure of words.

☕Power is in many ways a game of appearances, and when you say less than necessary, you inevitably appear greater and more powerful than you are.

The less you say, the more profound and mysterious you appear.

💭“I learned that you actually have more power when you shut up.”

By saying less than necessary you create the appearance of meaning and power.

Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under control. Be particularly careful with sarcasm.

Never start moving your own lips and teeth before the subordinates do. The longer I keep quiet, the sooner others move their lips and teeth. As they move their lips and teeth, I can thereby understand their real intentions.

The verbose are perceived as helpless and unsophisticated.

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips 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.

Once you let it out of the bag with insidious rumors, your opponents are in a horrible dilemma. →This is the perfect weapon for those who have no reputation of their own to work from.

The supreme importance of making and maintaining a reputation that is of your own creation.

In the beginning, you must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning.
→You then make your reputation known to as many people as possible(subtly, though; take care to build slowly, and with a firm foundation.)

🔑Make your reputation simple and base it on one sterling quality.

Reputation is a treasure to be carefully collected and hoarded. Especially when you are first establishing it, you must protect it strictly, anticipating all attacks on it. Once it is solid, never appear desperate in your self-defense.

An attack on another man’s reputation is a potent weapon, particularly when you have less power than he does. ⇔When your own reputation is solid, use subtler tactics, such as satire and ridicule, to weaken your opponent while making you out as a charming rogue.

The mighty lion toys with the mouse that crosses his path, any other reaction would mar his fearsome reputation.

💎Reputation is critical; there are no exceptions to this law.

Since we must live in society and must depend on the opinions of others, there is nothing to be gained by neglecting your reputation. ⇒By not caring how you are perceived, you let others decide this for you. Be the master of your fate, and also of your reputation.

Everything is judged by its appearance; what are unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all costs. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, and more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.

Surround your name with 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, the notoriety of any sort will bring you power. Better to be slandered and attacked than ignored.

Any kind of curiosity will serve the purpose, for crowds are magnetically attracted by the unusual and inexplicable. And once you have their attention, never let it go.

At the beginning of your rise to the top, spend all your energy on attracting attention.

🔑You have to learn to attract attention.

At the start of your career, you must attach your name and reputation to a quality, an image, that sets you apart from other people. This image can be something like a characteristic style of dress, or a personality quirk that amuses people and gets talked about.

To avoid being a flash, you must not discriminate between different types of attention; in the end, every kind will work in your favor.

The strangeness of the duke’s character attracted attention. Once people were enthralled by him, they wanted him around at any cost.

💎Never be afraid of the qualities that set you apart and draw attention to you.

People feel superior to the person whose action they can predict. If you show them who is in control by playing against their expectation, you both gain their respect and tighten your hold on their fleeting 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, and even frighten.

People are enthralled by mystery; because it invites constant interpretation, they never tire of it. The mysterious cannot be grasped. And what cannot be seized and consumed creates power.

If your social position prevents you from completely wrapping your actions in mystery, you must at least learn to make yourself less obvious. Every now and then, act in a way that does not mesh with other people’s perceptions of you.

If you find yourself trapped, cornered, and on the defensive in some situation, do something that cannot be easily explained or interpreted. Choose a simple action, but carry it out in a way that unsettles your opponent, a way with many possible interpretations, making your intentions obscure.

At the beginning of your rise to the top, you must attract attention to all costs, but as you rise higher you must constantly adapt. Never wear the public out with the same tactic. An air of mystery works wonders for those who need to develop an aura of power and get themselves noticed, but it must seem measured and under control.

The mystery you create must seem a game, playful and unthreatening. Recognize when it goes too far, and pull back.

Never appear overly greedy for attention, for it signals insecurity, and insecurity drives power away.

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, but it will also 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. →Outsource.

💭“Never do what others can do for you.” – Zairean Fable

The credit for an invention or creation is as important, if not more important, than the invention itself.

🔑Learn to take advantage of other people’s work to further your own cause.

Find people with the skills and creativity you lack.
Either hire them find a way to take their work and make it your own.

🔑Learn to use the knowledge of the past.

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

🔑There is much to be known, life is short, and life is not life without knowledge.
→It is an excellent device to acquire knowledge from everybody.

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.

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 last longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

🔑Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas indirectly.

🔑In the realm of power, you must learn to judge your moves by their long-term effects on other people.

Action and demonstration are much more powerful and meaningful.

No one can argue with demonstrated proof.

Making them literally and physically feel your meaning is infinitely more powerful than argument.

The most powerful persuasion goes beyond action into a symbol. The power of a symbol a flag, a mythic story, or a monument to some emotional event, is that everyone understands you without anything being said.

When aiming for power, or trying to conserve it, always look for the indirect route.

Choose your battles carefully.

💭“Never argue. In society nothing must be discussed; give only results.” – Benjamin Disraeli

A verbal argument has one vital use in the realm of power: To distract and cover your tracks when you are practicing deception or are caught in a lie.

When caught in a lie, the more emotional and certain you appear, the less likely it seems that you are lying.

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.

Many things are said to be infectious. Sleepiness can be infectious, and yawning as well.

You infect their spirit.

💭”Be not self-satisfied with your own ignorance. Let your intercourse be only with men of good repute: for it is by such association that men themselves attain to good repute. Observe how sesame oil is mingled with roses and it ceases to be sesame oil but is called oil of roses?” – Princes Kai Kaus Ibn Iskandar

Humans are extremely susceptible for the moods, emotions, and even the ways of thinking of those with whom they spend their time.

The incurably unhappy and unstable have a particularly strong infecting power because their characters and emotions are so intense.

💎In the game of power, the people you associate with are critical.

💎Never underestimate the dangers of infection.

Infectors can be recognized by their misfortune they draw on themselves their turbulent past, their long line of broken relationships, their infectious virus enters your pores without warning, spreading silently and corrosively.

There are people who attract happiness to themselves by their good cheer, natural buoyancy, and intelligence. They are a source of pleasure, and you must associate with them to share in the prosperity they draw upon themselves.

Associate with the generous, then, and they will infect you, opening up everything that is tight and restricted in you.
If you are gloomy, gravitate to the cheerful. If you are prone to isolation, force yourself to befriend the gregarious.
Never associate with those who share your defects, they will reinforce everything that holds you back.

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

💎Recognize the fortunate so that you may choose their company, and the unfortunate so that you may avoid them.

💭”Never open your door to the least of misfortunes, for, if you do, many others will follow in its train. Do not die of another’s misery.” – Baltasar Gracián

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

💎Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot possibly get rid of you.

It is much wiser to seek out weak rulers or masters with whom you can create a relationship of dependency.

Necessity rules the world.
People rarely act unless compelled to.
If you create no need for yourself, then you will be done away with at first opportunity.

💎The ultimate power is the power to get people to do as you wish.

By knowing other people’s secrets, by holding information that they wouldn’t want broadcast, you seal your fate with theirs. You are untouchable.
→Ministers of secret police have held this position throughout the ages: they can make or break a king.

💎It is better to be feared than loved.
Fear you can control; love, never.

More is to be gained from such dependence than courtesy.

When dependence disappears, so does civility and decency, and then respect.

💭”The first lesson which experience should teach you is to keep hope alive never satisfied, keeping even a royal patron ever in need of you.” – Baltasar Gracián

The drive for complete control is often ruinous and fruitless.
Interdependence remains the law, independence a rare and often fatal exception.

The master above you will in essence be your slave, for he will depend on you.

One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most 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.

With a well-timed gesture of honesty or generosity, you will have the most brutal and cynical beast in the kingdom eating out of your hand.

The essence of deception is distraction.
Distracting the people you want to deceive gives you the time and space to do something they won’t notice.

An act of kindness, generosity, or honesty is often the most powerful form of distraction because it disarms other people’s suspicions. It turns them into children, eagerly lapping up any kind of affectionate gesture.

🔑Learn to give before you take.
→It softens the ground, takes the bite out of a future request, or simply creates a distraction.

Selective honesty is best employed on your first encounter with someone.

If someone believes you are honest at the start of your relationship it takes a lot to convince them otherwise.

💎Honesty is one of the best ways to disarm the wary, second is generosity.

Few people can resist a gift, even from the most hardened enemy, which is why it is often the perfect way to disarm people. →A gift brings out the child in us, instantly lowering our defenses.

Selective kindness will often break down even the most stubborn foe: aiming right for the heart, it corrodes the will to fight back.

By playing on people’s emotions, calculated acts of kindness can turn a Capone into a gullible child.

💭”When you are about to take, you should give.” – Han Fei Tzu

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.

Make no appeal to his self-interest, he merely sees you as desperate or at best, a waste of time.

💎Self-interest is the lever that will move people.
→Once you make them see how you can in some way meet their needs or advance their cause, their resistance to your requests for help will magically fall away.

You must train yourself to think your way inside the other person’s mind, to see their needs and interests, to get rid of the screen of your own feelings that obscure the truth.

💭”The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours.” – Jean de La Bruyere

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.

💭”If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself. Again, if you perceive that a person is trying to conceal something from you, but with only partial success, look as though you did not believe him. The opposition on your part will provoke him into leading out his reserve of truth and bringing the whole force of it to bear upon your incredulity.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

Emphasize friendly chatter, not valuable information.

Give them a false confession and they will give you a real one.

Getting to know a person’s character is the best way of solving problems before they arise
By tempting people into certain acts, you learn about their loyalty, their honesty, and so on. And this kind of knowledge is often the most valuable of all: Armed with it, you can predict their future actions.

Information is critical to power, so be prepared for other people to spy on you.

💎One of the most potent weapons in the battle for information is giving out false information.

Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely (Sometimes leaders learn 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.

Power must be exterminated, crushed, and denied the chance to return to haunt us.
→Reconciliation is out of the question. Only one side can win, and it must win totally.

💭”To have total victory, you must be ruthless.” – Napoleon Bonaparte

Have no mercy. Crush your enemies as totally as they would crush you.

Allow your enemies no options. Annihilate them and their territory is yours to carve. The goal of power is to control your enemies completely, to make them obey your will. You cannot afford to go halfway. If they have no options, they will be forced to do your bidding.

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.

At the start of an affair, you need to heighten your presence in the eyes of the other.
→Once your lover’s emotions are engaged, and the feeling of love has crystallized, absence enflames and excites.

“Absence diminishes minor passions and enflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans a fire.” – La Rouchefoucauld

The more you are seen and heard from, the more your value decreases. You become a habit. No matter how hard you try to be different, subtly, without your knowing why, people respect you less and less. →At the right moment you must learn to withdraw yourself before you unconsciously push you away.

🔑Learn to keep yourself obscure and make people demand your return.
→This law only applies once a certain level of power has been attained.

When you are first entering onto the world’s stage, create an image that is recognizable, reproducible, and is seen everywhere.

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 our moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.

Nothing is more terrifying than the sudden and unpredictable. →That is why we are so frightened by earthquakes and tornadoes: we do not know when they will strike.

A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initiative on his side. →You sometimes need to strike without warning, to make others tremble when they least expect it.

💭”Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible. Such tactics will win every time and a small army may thus destroy a large one.” – General Stonewall Jackson

People are always trying to read the motives behind your actions and to use your predictability against you. Throw in a completely inexplicable move and you put them on the defensive. Because they do not understand you, they are unnerved, and in such a state you can easily intimidate them.

The more capricious you appear, the more respect you will garner. Only the terminally subordinate act in a predictable manner.

Patterns are powerful, and you can terrify people by disputing them.

The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere, everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes your to 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, and mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

Never enclose yourself so far from the streets that you cannot hear what is happening around you, including the plots against you.

Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. →To make yourself powerful you must place yourself at the center of things.

All activity should revolve around you, and you should be aware of everything happening on the street, and of anyone who might be hatching plots against you.

In moments of uncertainty and danger, you need to fight this desire to turn inward. Instead, make yourself more accessible, seek out old allies and make new ones, force yourself into more and more different circles. This has been the trick of powerful people for centuries.

The moment you lose contact with your people, seeking security in isolation, rebellion is brewing. →Never imagine yourself so elevated that you can afford to cut yourself off from even the lowest echelons.

Float in and out of different circles and mix with different types.
→This kind of mobility and social contact will protect you from plotters, who will be unable to keep secrets from you, and from your enemies, who will be unable to isolate you from your allies.

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 carefully, then never offend or deceive the wrong person.

💎Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are.

Study people’s weaknesses, the chinks in their armor, their areas of both pride and insecurity. Know their ins and outs before you even decide whether or not to deal with them.

In judging and measuring your opponent, never rely on your instincts.

💎Never trust appearances.

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.

🔑Since power depends greatly on appearances, you must learn the tricks that will enhance your image.
Refusing to commit to a person or group is one of these.
When you hold yourself back, you incur not anger but a kind of respect.

💎Desire is like a virus; if we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too.

People who rush to the support of others tend to gain little respect in the process, for their help is so easily obtained, while those who stand back find themselves besieged with supplicants. Their aloofness is powerful, and everyone wants them on their side.

☕When you want to seduce a woman, court her sister first.

Stay aloof and people will come to you. It will become a challenge for them to win your affections.

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

Do not let people drag you into their petty fights and squabbles. →Seem interested and supportive, but find a way to remain neutral; let others do the fighting while you stand back, watch and wait. →When the fighting parties are good and tired they will be ripe for the picking. ⇒You can make it a practice, in fact, to stir up quarrels between other people, and then offer to mediate, gaining power as the go-between.

💭”Men of great abilities are slow to act for it is easier to avoid occasions for committing yourself than to come well out of commitment. Such occasions test your judgement; it is safer to avoid them than to emerge victorious from them. One obligation leads to a greater one, and you come very near to the brink of disaster.” — Baltasar Gracián

Once you step into a fight that is not of your own choosing, you lose all initiative. The combatants’ interests become your interests; you become their tool.
⇒Learn to control yourself, to restrain your natural tendency to take sides and join the fight.
⇒Be friendly and charming to each of the combatants, then step back as they collide. With every battle they grow weaker, while you grow stronger with every battle you avoid.

To play the game properly, you must seem interested in other people’s problems, even sometimes appear to take their side. But while you make outward gestures of support, you must maintain your inner energy and sanity by keeping your emotions disengaged. No matter how hard people try to pull you in, never let your interest in their affairs and petty squabbles go beyond the surface.
⇒Give them gifts, listen with a sympathetic look, even occasionally play the charmer—but inwardly keep both the friendly kings and the perfidious Borgias at arm’s length.
⇒By refusing to commit and thus maintaining your autonomy you retain the initiative: Your moves stay matters of your own choosing, not defensive reactions to the push-and-pull of those around you.

Holding back from the fray allows you to: have time to position yourself to take advantage of the situation once one side starts to lose.
⇒You can also take the game a step further, by promising your support to both sides in a conflict while maneuvering so that the one to come out ahead in the struggle is you.

Preserving your autonomy gives you options when people come to blows, you can play the mediator, broker the peace, while really securing your own interests. You can pledge support to one side and the other may have to court you with a higher bid. Or, you can appear to take both sides, then play the antagonists against each other.

☕Play a waiting game and you cannot lose.

You have only so much energy and so much time. Every moment wasted on the affairs of others subtracts from your strength.
⇒You may be afraid that people will condemn you as heartless, but in the end, maintaining your independence and self-reliance will gain you more respect and place you in a position of power from which you can choose to help other on your own initiative.

Eventually you may find it worthwhile to commit to one side, if only for appearances’ sake, to prove you are capable of attachment.
Even then, however, the key will to be maintain your inner independence, keep yourself from getting emotionally involved. Preserve the unspoken option of being able to leave any moment and reclaim your freedom if the side you are allied with starts to collapse. The friends you made while you were being courted will give you plenty of places to go once you jump ship.

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.

Given how important the idea of intelligence is to most people’s vanity, it is critical never inadvertently to insult or impugn a person’s brain power.

Subliminally reassure people that they are more intelligent than you are, or even that you are bit of a moron, and you can run rings around them.

☕An air of complete naivete can work wonders.

In general, always make people believe they are smarter and more sophisticated than you are. They will keep you around because you make them feel better about themselves, and the longer you are around, the more opportunities you will have to deceive them.

💎To reveal the true nature of your intelligence rarely pays; you should get in the habit of downplaying it at all times.

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.

Surrender conceals great power: Lulling the enemy into complacency, it gives you time to recoup, time to undermine, time for revenge. Never sacrifice that time in exchange for honor in a battle that you cannot win.

People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic.
Your outward submission makes them feel important; satisfied that you respect them, they become easier targets for a later counterattack, or for the kind of indirect ridicule.
Measuring your power over time, never sacrifice long-term maneuverability for the short-lived glories of martyrdom.

💭”When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts” — Ethiopian proverb

💎What gets us into trouble is often our own overreaction to the moves of our enemies and rivals.

The next time someone pushes you and you find yourself starting to react, try this: Do not resist or fight back, but yield, turn the other cheek, bend.
⇒By yielding, you in fact control the situation, because your surrender is part of a larger plan of lull them into believing they have defeated you.

Use surrender to gain access to your enemy. Learn his ways, insinuate yourself with him slowly, outwardly conform to his customs, but inwardly maintain your own culture.
⇒Eventually you will emerge victorious, for while he considers you weak and inferior, and takes no precautions against you, you are using the time to catch up and surpass him.
This soft, permeable form of invasion is often the best, for the enemy has nothing to react against, prepare for, or resist.

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.

What is bloated beyond its proportions inevitably collapses. What is dissipated, divided, and distended rots and falls to the ground. The bigger it bloats, the harder it falls.
⇔The mind must not wander from goal to goal, or be distracted by success from its sense of purpose and proportion. What is concentrated, coherent, and connected to its past has power.

💭”Beware of dissipating your powers: strive constantly to concentrate them.” — Johann Von Goethe

Only through such an anchoring in the past was the family able to thrive amidst such chaos. Concentration was the foundation of the Rothschilds’ power, wealth, and stability.

💰Concentrate on a single goal, a single task, and beat it into submission.

Much energy is saved, and more power is attained, by affixing yourself to a single, appropriate source of power.

In the end, the single patron appreciates your loyalty and becomes dependent on your services; in the long run the master serves the slave.

💎Power itself always exists in concentrated forms.

💭”Prize intensity more than extensity. Perfection resides in quality, not quantity. Extent alone never rises above mediocrity and it is the misfortune of men with wide general interests that while they would like to have their finger in every pie, they have one in none. Intensity gives eminence, and rises to the heroic in matters sublime.” — Baltasar Gracián

In cases when you may need protection, it is often wise to entwine yourself around several sources of power.
→Such a move would be especially prudent in periods of great tumult and violent change, or when your enemies are numerous.

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 courtier-ship and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

The Laws of Court Politics:

💡It is a wise thing to be polite; it is stupid to be rude.

💭”You can make people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

🔑The greatest skill of all is the ability to make the master look more talented than those around him.

🔑Never inadvertently stir up the resentment of one in pleasing another.

Never joke about a person’s plumpness, even indirectly, and particularly when he is your master.

In matters of taste you can never be too obsequious with your master. Taste is one of the ego’s prickliest parts; never impugn or question the master’s taste: his poetry is sublime, his dress impeccable, and his manner the model for all.

Do not overstep your bounds. Do what you are assigned to do, and never do more.
→To think that by doing more you are doing better is a common blunder. It is never good to seem to be trying too hard; it is as if you were covering up some deficiency.
→Fulfilling a task that has not been asked of you just makes people suspicious. If you are a crown-keeper, be a crown-keeper. Save your excess energy for when you are not in the court.

Make your master a gift of your talents and you will rise above other courtiers. Let him take the credit if necessary, it will only be temporary: Use him as a stepping stone, a way of displaying your talent and eventually buying your freedom from enslavement.

Never ask for too much, and know when to stop. It is the master’s prerogative to give; to give when he wants and what he wants, and to do so without prompting.
→Do not give him the chance to reject your requests. Better to win favors by deserving them, so that they are bestowed without your asking.

It is a mistake to image that the master is the only one to determine your fate. Your equals and subordinates play integral parts also.
You have to placate everyone who might someday harm you, deflecting their resentment and envy and diverting their hostility onto other people.

💭”Put in the sheep. It is always beneficial to play the obliging courtier, even when you are not serving a master.” — Winston Churchill

Never risk being caught in your maneuvers; never let people see your devices. If that happens you instantly pass in people’s perceptions from a courtier of great manners to a loathsome rogue. It is a delicate game you play; apply the utmost attention to covering your tracks, and never let your master unmask you.

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Recreate 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 your. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions; your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

🔑You must learn to enlarge your actions through dramatic techniques such as surprise, suspense, the creation of sympathy, and symbolic identification.

You must be constantly aware of audience of what will please them and what will bore them. You must arrange to place yourself at the center, to command attention, and never to be upstaged at any cost.

Understand this: The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. Your power is limited to the tiny amount allotted to the role you have selected or have been forced to assume. An actor, on the other hand, plays many roles. Enjoy that protean power, and if it is beyond you, at least forge a new identity, one of your own making, one that has had no boundaries assigned to it by an envious and resentful world. This act of defiance is Promethean: It makes you responsible for your own creation.

Stop allowing others that ability to limit and mold them.
⇒Remake yourself into a character of power.

You must demand for yourself the power to determine your position in the painting, and to create your own image.
⇒The first step in the process of self-creation is self-consciousness—being aware of yourself as an actor and taking control of your appearance and emotions.
The bad actor is the one who is always sincere. People who wear their hearts on their sleeves out in society are tiresome and embarrassing.

Good actors control themselves better. They can play sincere and heartfelt, can affect a tear and a compassionate look at will, but they don’t have to feel it. They externalize emotion in a form that others can understand.

🔑Adopt the plasticity of the actor, who can mold his or her face to the emotion required.

The creation of a memorable character, one that compels attention, that stands out above the other players on the stage.

🔑You must learn to orchestrate events in a similar manner, never revealing all your cards at once, but unfolding them in a way that heightens their dramatic effect.

It is less what you do that matters, clearly, than how you do it; your gracefulness and imposing stillness on the social stage count for more than overdoing your part and moving around too much.

🔑Learn to play many roles, to be whatever the moment requires. Adapt your mask to the situation; be protean in the faces you wear.

💭”Know how to be all things to all men. A discreet Proteus, a scholar among scholars, a saint among saints. That is the art of winning over everyone, for like attracts like. Take note of temperaments and adapt yourself to that of each person you meet; follow the lead of the serious and jovial in turn, changing your mood discreetly.” — Baltasar Gracián

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 disguise your involvement.

🔥People of power are undone not by the mistakes they make, but by the way they deal with them.

Cut off the mistake instantly, distract attention from yourself, and focus attention on a convenient scapegoat before people have time to ponder your responsibility or your possible incompetence.

Because it comes so naturally to us to look outward rather than inward, we readily accept the scapegoat’s guilt.

💡It is often wise to choose the most innocent victim possible as a sacrificial lamb.
⇒Be careful, however, not to create a martyr.
It is important that you remain the victim, the poor leader betrayed by the incompetence of those around you.
⇒Sometimes you should find a more powerful scapegoat, one who will elicit less sympathy in the long run.

Make use of the cat’s paw: In the fable, the Monkey grabs the paw of his friend, the Cat, and uses it to fish chestnuts out of the fire, thus getting the nuts he craves, without hurting himself. If there is something unpleasant or unpopular that needs to be done, it is far too risky for you to do the work yourself. You need a cat‘s-paw-someone who does the dirty, dangerous work for you. The cat’s-paw grabs what you need, hurts whom you need hurt, and keeps people from noticing that you are the one responsible. Let someone else be the executioner, or the bearer of bad news, while you bring only joy and glad tidings.

Legend has it that Cleopatra succeeded through her seductive charms, but in reality her power came from an ability to get people to do her bidding without realizing they were being manipulated.

A queen must never dirty her hands with ugly tasks, nor can a king appear in public with blood on his face.
→Yet power cannot survive without the constant squashing of enemies—there will always be dirty little tasks that have to be done to keep you on the throne.
Like Cleopatra, you need a cat’s-paw.
→This will usually be a person from outside your immediate circle, who will therefore be unlikely to realize how he or she is being used.

There are two uses of the cat’s paw: to save appearances, as Cleopatra did, and to save energy and effort.

Look for a powerful third party who shares an enemy with you then take advantage of their superior power to deal blows which would have cost you much more energy, since you are weaker.

Always search out the overly aggressive as potential cat’s-paws; they are often more than willing to get into a fight, and you can choose just the right fight for your purposes.

Never impose favors. Search out ways to make yourself the cat’s-paw, indirectly extricating your friends from distress without imposing yourself or making them feel obligated to you.

💰The truly powerful seem never to be in a hurry or overburdened.

💎Truly powerful people keep their hands clean. Only good things surround them.

Use an associate or subordinate to hook you up with your primary target.

As the instrument that protects a master or peer from unpleasantness or danger, you gain immense respect, which sooner or later will pay dividends. And remember: If you can make your assistance subtle and gracious rather than boastful and burdensome, your recompense will be that much more the more satisfying and powerful.

💭”Do everything pleasant yourself, everything unpleasant through third parties. By adopting the first course you win favor, by taking the second you deflect ill will. Important affairs often require rewards and punishments. Let only the good come from you and the evil from others.” — Baltasar Gracián

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.

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.

☕Hesitation puts obstacles in your path, boldness eliminates them.

🔑It is essential to overcome your natural timidity and practice the art of audacity.

💭”Do boldly what you do at all.” — Aesop Fables

🔑You must practice and develop your boldness. You will often find uses for it.

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.

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

💭”Experience shows that, if one foresees from far away the designs to be undertaken, one can act with speed when the moment comes to execute them.” — Cardinal Richelieu

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

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 temptation of revealing how hard you work, it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else.

💎Never expose the sweat and labor behind your poise.

One never sees the source of a god’s power revealed; one only sees its effects.

Sprezzatura – the capacity to make the difficult seem easy.

🔑Avoid the temptation of showing how clever you are, it is far more clever to conceal the mechanisms of your cleverness.

The more mystery surrounds your actions, the more awesome your power seems.

The best descriptions 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 evil, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.

People who are choosing between alternatives find it hard to believe they are being manipulated or deceived; they cannot see that you are allowing them a small amount of free will in exchange for much more powerful imposition of your own will.
⇒Setting up a narrow range of choices should always be a part of your deceptions.

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

💎It is always good to allow your victims their choice of poison, and to cloak your involvement in providing it to them as far as possible.

💭”For the wounds and every other evil that men inflict upon themselves spontaneously, and of their own choice, are in the long run less painful than those inflicted by others.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

Controlling the options has one main purpose: to disguise yourself as the agent of power and punishment.

☕It is usually more elegant and more effective to give people the illusion of choice.

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 flock to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

💎People rarely believe that their problems arise from their own misdeeds and stupidity.
→Someone or something out there is to blame: the other, the world, the gods, and so salvation comes from the outside as well. Such is the power of the fantasies that take root in us, especially in times of scarcity and decline.
⇒To gain power, you must be a source of pleasure for those around you; and pleasure comes from playing to people’s fantasies.

💭”If you want to tell lies that will be believed, don’t tell the truth that won’t.” — Emperor Tokugawa

☕The person who can spin a fantasy out of an oppressive reality has access to untold power.

The key to fantasy is distance.

Should you play with such a fantasy, you too must carefully cultivate distance and not allow your “common” persona to become too familiar or it will not project as fantasy.

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.

One of the most important things to realize about people is that they all have a weakness, some part of their psychological armor that will not resist, that will bend to your will if you find it and push on it.

☕Those who disguise themselves are often the ones most effectively undone through that one chink in their armor.

In planning your assault, keep these principles in mind:

☕A person’s weakness is revealed by seemingly unimportant gestures and passing words.

Start by always seeming interested; the appearance of a sympathetic ear will spur anyone to talk.
→A clever trick is to appear to open up to the other person, to share a secret with them.

What oozes out in the little things outside our conscious control is what you want to know.

When entering the court, find the weak link.
⇒The person in control is often not the king or queen; it is someone behind the scenes: the favorite, the husband, or wife, even the court fool.

When dealing with helpless children who cannot make decisions, play on their weakness and push them into bold ventures. They will have to depend on you even more, for you will become the adult figure whom they rely on to get them out of scrapes and to safety.

When searching for suckers, always look for the dissatisfied, the unhappy, the insecure. Such people are riddled with weaknesses and have needs that you can fill. Their neediness is the groove in which you place your thumbnail and turn them at will.

☕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.

Timidity is a potent weakness to exploit. Timid souls often yearn to be their opposite-to be Napoleons. Yet they lack the inner strength.
You can become their Napoleon, pushing them into bold actions that server your needs while also making them dependent on you.

🔑Look to the opposites and never take appearances at face value.

The more emotional the weakness, the greater the potential danger. Know the limits to this game and never get carried away by your control over your victims. You are after power, not the thrill of control.

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.

💭”Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone.
Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority. Come to hold yourself in awe.” — Baltasar Gracián

Powerful people may be tempted to affect a common-man aura, trying to create the illusion that they and their subjects or underlings are basically the same. But the people whom this false gesture is intended to impress will quickly see through it. They understand that they are not being given more power—that it only appears as if they shared in the powerful person’s fate. The only kind of common touch that works is the kind affected by Franklin Roosevelt, a style that said the president shared values and goals with the common people even while he remained a patrician at heart. He never pretended to erase his distance from the crowd.
⇒Leaders who try to dissolve that distance through a false chumminess gradually lose the ability to inspire loyalty, fear, or love. Instead they elicit contempt.

Christopher Columbus
When Christopher Columbus was trying to find funding for his legendary voyages, many around him believed he came from the Italian aristocracy.
But it was nothing more than illustrious fantasy, for Columbus was actually the son of a humble weaver who had opened a wine shop and made his living by selling cheese.
Columbus himself had created the myth of his noble background, because from early on he felt that destiny had singled him out for great things, and that he had a kind of royalty in his blood. Accordingly he acted as if he were indeed descended from noble stock.
Using the fabricated story of his noble background, he married into an established Lisbon family that had excellent connections with Portuguese royalty.
Through his in-laws, Columbus finagled a meeting with the king of Portugal, whom he petitioned a to finance a westward voyage aimed at discovering a shorter route to Asia. In return for announcing that any discoveries he achieved would be made in the king’s name, Columbus wanted a series of rights: the title of Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea; the office of viceroy over any lands he found; and 10% of the future commerce with such lands. All of these rights were to be hereditary and for all time. Columbus made these demands even though he had previously been a mere merchant, he knew almost nothing about navigation, he could not work a quadrant, and he had never led a group of men. In short he had absolutely no qualifications for the journey he proposed. Furthermore, his petition included no details as to how he would accomplish his plans, just vague promises.
By asking for the moon, he had instantly raised his own status, for the king assumed that unless a man who set such a high price on himself were mad, which Columbus did not appear to be, he must somehow be worth it.
Columbus had an amazing power to charm the nobility, and it all came from the way he carried himself. He projected a sense of confidence that was completely out of proportion to his means. Nor was his confidence the aggressive, ugly self-promotion of an upstart—it was a quiet and calm self-assurance. In fact it was the same confidence usually shown by the nobility themselves. The powerful in the old-style aristocracies felt no need to prove or assert themselves; being noble, they knew they always deserved more, and asked for it. With Columbus, then, they felt an instant affinity, for he carried himself just the way they did—elevated above the crowd, destined for greatness.
⇒Understand: It is within your power to set your own price. How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself. If you ask for little, shuffle your feet and lower your head, people will assume this reflects your character.

If we believe we are destined for great things, our belief will radiate outward, just as a crown creates an aura around a king. This outward radiance will infect the people around us, who will think we must have reasons to feel so confident. People who wear crowns seem to feel no inner sense of the limits to what they can ask for or what they can accomplish. This too radiates outward. Limits and boundaries disappear.

🔑Be overcome by your self-belief. Even while you know you are practicing a kind of deception on yourself, act like a king. You are likely to be treated as one.

🔑You have to act differently, demonstrating your distance from those around you. One way to emphasize your difference is to always act with dignity, no matter the circumstance.
⇒Dignity is invariably the mask to assume under difficult circumstances: It is as if nothing can affect you, and you have all the time in the world to respond. This is an extremely powerful pose.

To reinforce the inner psychological tricks involved in projecting a royal demeanor, there are outward strategies to help you create the effect.

Accepting gifts creates a kind of equality.

The gift strategy is subtle and brilliant because you do not beg: You ask for help in a dignified way that implies equality between two people, one of whom just happens to have more money.
Remember: It is up to you to set your own price. Ask for less and that is just what you will get. Ask for more, however, and you send a signal that you are worth a king’s ransom. Even those who turn you down respect you for your confidence, and that respect will eventually pay off in ways you cannot imagine.

💭”Everyone should be royal after his own fashion. Let all your actions, even though they are not those of a king, be, in their own sphere, worthy of one. Be sublime in your deeds, lofty in your thoughts; and in all your doings show that you deserve to be a king even though you are not one in reality.” — Baltasar Gracián

💎Never make the mistake of thinking that you elevate yourself by humiliating people.
Also, it is never a good idea to loom too high above the crowd, you make an easy target.

Understand: You are radiating confidence, not arrogance or disdain.

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.

💭”Space we can recover, time never” — Napoleon Bonaparte

☕Time is an artificial concept that we ourselves have created to make the limitlessness of eternity and the universe more bearable, more human. Since we have constructed the concept of time, we are also able to mold it to some degree, to play tricks with it.
⇒Time, then, depends on perception, which, we know, can be willfully altered. This is the first thing to understand in mastering the art of timing. If the inner turmoil caused by our emotions tends to make time move faster, it follows that once we control our emotional responses to events, time will move much more slowly. This altered way of dealing with things tends to lengthen our perception of future time, opens up possibilities that fear and anger close off, and allows us the patience that is the principal requirement in the art of timing.

There are three kinds of time for us to deal with;

When you force the pace out of fear and impatience, you create a nest of problems that require fixing, and you end up taking much longer than if you had taken your time.
Hurriers may occasionally get there quicker, but papers fly everywhere, new dangers arise, and they find themselves in constant crisis mode, fixing the problems that they themselves have created.
⇒Sometimes not acting in the face of danger is your best move—you wait, you deliberately slow down. As time passes it will eventually present opportunities you had not imagined.

You do not deliberately slow time down to live longer, or to take more pleasure in the moment, but the better to play the game of power.

Forced Time. The trick in forcing time is to upset the timing of others to make them hurry, to make them wait, to make them abandon their own pace, to distort their perception of time. By upsetting the timing of your opponent while you stay patient, you open up time for yourself, which is half the game.
⇒Making people wait is a powerful way of forcing time, as long as they do not figure out what you are up to.
⇔The opposite effect is equally powerful: You make your opponents hurry. Start off your dealings with them slowly, then suddenly apply pressure, making them feel that everything is happening at once. People who lack the time to think will make mistakes, so set their deadlines for them.

There is no power to be gained in letting go of that reins and adapting to whatever time brings. To some degree you must guide time or you will be its merciless victim.

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.

Remember: You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest.
What you do not react to cannot drag you down.

💭”Kick him, he’ll forgive you. Flatter him, he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he’ll hate you.” — Idries Shah, Caravan of Dreams

☕Crying “sour grapes” is sometimes seen as a reflection of the weak; it is actually the tactic of the powerful.

When you yourself have committed a blunder, the best response is often to make less of your mistake by treating it lightly.

💎Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended; that only shows you have acknowledged a problem. Contempt is a dish that is best served cold and without affectation.

🔑Know how to play the card of contempt. It is the most politic kind of revenge.

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.

💰Your search for power depends on shortcuts.

Establish a trademark to set yourself apart.
⇒Find an image or symbol from the past that will neatly fit your situation, and put it on your shoulders like a cape. It will make you seem larger than life.

Words
→Words are dangerous instruments, and often go astray.
→If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question.
→Words stir up arguments and divisions; images bring people together. They are the quintessential instruments of power.

💭”The truth is generally seen, rarely heard.” — Gracián

💎Never neglect the way you arrange things visually.

Find and associate yourself with the images and symbols that will communicate in this immediate way today, and you will have untold power.
⇒Most effective of all is a new combination; a fusion of images and symbols that have not been seen together before, but that through their association clearly demonstrate your new idea, message, religion.

💎Always find a symbol to represent your cause; the more emotional associations, the better.

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.

💭”He lives well who conceals himself well.” “bene vixit, qui bene latuit” — Ovid

☕People who flaunt their infatuation with a different culture are expressing a disdain and contempt for their own.

🔑Cultures have norms that reflect centuries of shared beliefs and ideals. Do not expect to scoff at such things with impunity.

💡Wise and clever people learn early on that they can display conventional behavior and mouth conventional ideas without having to believe in them.

💭”If Machiavelli had had a prince for disciple, the first thing he would have recommended him to do would have been to write a book against Machiavellism” — Voltaire

☕The black sheep. Stay with the herd; there is safety in numbers. Keep your differences in your thoughts and not in your fleece.

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.

Even those who attain the heights of power would be better off at least affecting the common touch, for at some point they may need popular support.

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.

To show your frustration is to show that you have lost your power to shape events; it is the helpless action of the child who resorts to a hysterical fit to get his way. →The powerful never reveal this kind of weakness.

Remember: Tantrums neither intimidate nor inspire loyalty. They only create doubts and uneasiness about your power.

💭”It is only the cold-blooded animals whose bite is poisonous.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

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. Once the water is stirred up, the little fish cannot help but rise to the bait. The angrier they become, the less control they have, and finally they are caught in the whirlpool you have made, and they drown.

💎We have to realize that nothing in the social realm, and in the game of power is personal.

Anger only cuts off our options, and the powerful cannot thrive without options.
Once you train yourself not to take matters personally, and to control your emotional responses, you will have placed yourself in a position of tremendous power: Now you can play with the emotional responses of other people.

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.

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

☕The powerful learn early to protect their most valuable resources: independence and room to maneuver.

Look at the masters of power there is not a miser among them. Even the great con artists spend freely to swindle. Tight purse strings are unattractive.

The powerful understand that money is psychologically charged, and that it is also a vessel of politeness and sociability.
They make the human side of money a weapon in their armory.

💰Powerful people judge everything by what it costs, not just in money but in time, dignity, and peace of mind.

💭”The worth of money is not in its possession, but in its use.” — Aesop Fables

💭”Tada yori takai mono wa nai” “Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge.” — Michihiro Matsumoto

💰Make power your goal and money will find its way to you.

The powerful must have grandeur of spirit; they can never reveal any pettiness.
Money is the most visible arena in which to display either grandeur or pettiness.
Best spend freely, and create a reputation for generosity, which in the end will pay great dividends.

💰If you want to meddle in the work of creative people under your hire, at least pay them well. Your money will buy their submission better than your displays of power.

Two fundamental properties of money:

Understand: Money may determine power relationships, but those relationships need not depend on the amount of money you have; they also depend on the way you use it.

When we are children, all kinds of complicated feelings about our parents center around gifts; we see the giving of a gift as a sign of love and approval. And that emotional element never goes away.
⇒The recipients of gifts, financial or otherwise, are suddenly as vulnerable as children, especially when the gift comes from someone in authority. They cannot help opening up; their will is loosened.
⇒To succeed best, the gift should come out of the blue.

💰The sudden, unexpected, one-time gift will not spoil your children; it will keep them under your thumb.

The more your gifts and your acts of generosity play with sentiment, the more powerful they are. ⇒The object or concept that plays with a charged emotion or hits a chord of sentiment has more power than the money you squander on an expensive yet lifeless present.

💰Learn to pay the full price; it will save you a lot in the end.

The powerful never forget that what is offered for free is inevitably a trick.
⇒Friends who offer favors without asking for payment will later want something far dearer than the money you would have paid them.

💰Learn to pay and to pay well.

Dangling the lure of a free lunch is the con artist’s stock in trade.

Bait your deceptions with the possibility of easy money. People are essentially lazy, and want wealth to fall in their lap rather than to work for it. For a small sum, sell them advice on how to make millions (P. T. Barnum did this later in life), and that small sum will become a fortune when multiplied by thousands of suckers. Lure people in with the prospect of easy money and you have the room to work still more deceptions on them, since greed is powerful enough to blind your victims to anything. And as the Yellow Kid said, half the fun is teaching a moral lesson: Greed does not pay.

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.

💭”Necessity is what impels men to take action, and once the necessity is gone, only rot and decay are left.” — Machiavelli

Assuming you have the choice, it would be better to avoid having to compete with another star in the sky. ⇒Power depends on appearing larger than other people, and when you are lost in the shadow of the father, the king, the great predecessor, you cannot possibly project such a presence.

If you cannot materially start from ground zero; it would be foolish to renounce an inheritance; you can at least begin from ground zero psychologically, by throwing off the weight of the past and charting a new direction.

Privileges of birth are impediments to power.
Be merciless with the past; not only with your father and his father but with your own earlier achievements.
Only the weak rest on their laurels and dote on past triumphs; in the game of power there is never time to rest.

The past prevents the young hero from creating his own world.
⇒Only after the father figure has been properly done away with will you have the necessary space to create and establish a new order.

Never let yourself be seen as following your predecessor’s path. If you do you will never surpass him. You must physically demonstrate your difference, by establishing a style and symbolism that sets you apart.

💰There is so much power to be gained from entering vacuums and voids.

Burn all the books(manuals), and train yourself to react to circumstances as they happen.

☕You may believe that you have separated yourself from the predecessor or father figure, but as you grow older you must be vigilant lest you become the father you had rebelled against.

Remember: You are your own father. Do not let yourself spend years creating yourself only to let your guard down and allow the ghost of the past: father, habit, history to sneak back in.

💰Plenitude and prosperity tend to make us lazy and inactive.
⇒You must be prepared to return to square one psychologically rather than growing fat and lazy with prosperity.

💭”Beware of stepping into a great man’s shoes—you will have to accomplish twice as much to surpass him. Those who follow are taken for imitators. No matter how much they sweat, they will never shed that burden. It is an uncommon skill to find a new path for excellence, a modern route to celebrity. There are many roads to singularity, not all of them well traveled. The newest ones can be arduous, but they are often shortcuts to greatness. ” — Baltasar Gracián

💡It is often wise to keep an eye on the young, your future rivals in power.

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.

Do not waste your time lashing out in all directions at what seems to be a many-headed enemy.
→Find the one head that matters—the person with willpower, or smarts, or, most important of all, charisma.
→Whatever it costs you, lure this person away, for once he is absent his powers will lose their effect. His isolation can be physical (banishment or absence from the court), political (narrowing his base of support), or psychological (alienating him from the group through slander and insinuation).
⇒Cancer begins with a single cell; excise it before it spreads beyond cure.

💎In every group, power is concentrated in the hand of one or two people, for this is one area in which human nature will never change:
→People will congregate around a single strong personality like planets orbiting a sun.

💡Once you recognize who the stirrer is, pointing it out to other people will accomplish a great deal.

Your absence from the court spells danger for you, and you should never leave the scene in a time of turmoil, for your absence can both symbolize and induce a loss power; second, on the other hand, luring your enemies away from the court at critical moments is a great ploy.

💎Always search out people who hold high positions yet who find themselves isolated on the board. They are like apples falling into your lap, easily seduced, and able to catapult you into power yourself.

Aim at the leaders, bring them down, and look for the endless opportunities in the confusion that will ensue.

💭”If you draw a bow, draw the strongest. If you use an arrow, use the longest. To shoot a rider, first shoot his horse. To catch a gang of bandits, first capture its leader. Just as a country has its border, so the killing of men has its limits. If the enemy’s attack can be stopped with a blow to the head, why have any more dead and wounded than necessary?” — Chinese poet Tu Fu, Tang

💭“Any harm you do to a man should be done in such a way that you need not fear his revenge,” — Machiavelli

You may often find it better to keep people on your side, where you can watch them, than to risk creating an angry enemy. Keeping them close, you can secretly whittle away at their support base, so that when the time comes to cut them loose they will fall fast and hard without knowing what hit them.

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.

At all times you must attend to those around you, gauging their particular psychology, tailoring your words to what you know will entice and seduce them.
⇒The higher your station, the greater the need to remain attuned to the hearts and minds of those below you, creating a base of support to maintain you at the pinnacle.
⇒Without that base, your power will teeter, and at the slightest change of fortune those below will gladly assist in your fall from grace.

💭”Persuasion is more effective than force.” — Aesop Fables

In all your encounters, take a step back—take the time to calculate and attune yourself to your targets’ emotional makeup and psychological weaknesses. Force will only strengthen their resistance.
⇒With most people the heart is the key: They are like children, ruled by their emotions. To soften them up, alternate harshness with mercy. Play on their basic fears, and also their loves—freedom, family, etc.
⇒Once you break them down, you will have a lifelong friend and fiercely loyal ally.

💎In the game of power, you are surrounded by people who have absolutely no reason to help you unless it is in their interest to do so.

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.

When addressing the public, describe how it would affect them on the most primitive, down to earth level. Do not believe that this approach works only with the illiterate and unschooled; it works on one and all. All of us are mortals and face the same dreadful fate, and all of us share the desire for attachment and belonging. Stir up these emotions and you captivate hearts.

Play on contrasts: Push people to despair, then give them relief. If they expect pain and you give them pleasure, you win their hearts.
⇒💎Creating pleasure of any kind will usually bring you success, as will allaying fears and providing security.

The quickest way to secure people’s minds is by demonstrating as simple as possible, how an action will benefit them.
💰💎Self interest is the strongest motive of all.

💡It is always good policy to have in your pocket at least one artist or intellectual who can appeal concretely to people’s minds.
⇒It is dangerous to alienate those who have powers of expression and useful to pacify and exploit them.

💎You must constantly win over more allies on all levels; a time will inevitably come when you will need them.

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.

There are 4 main Mirror Effects in the realm of power:

💭”When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.” — Edgar Allan Poe

💭”The doctor should be opaque to his patients, and like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.” — Sigmund Freud

💡When dealing with people who are lost in the reflections of fantasy worlds never try to push them into reality by shattering their mirrors. Instead, enter their world and operate inside it, under their rules, gently guiding them out of the hall of mirrors they have entered.

🔑Study people’s eyes, follow their gestures.

🔑Notice and remember the details; the clothing, the choice of friends, the daily habits, the tossed-out remarks that reveal hidden and rarely indulged desires.

🔑Remember: The wordless communication, the indirect compliment, contains the most power. No one can resist the enchantment.

Remember: Study the world’s surfaces and learn to mirror them in your habits, your manner, your clothes. Like a carnivorous plant, to unsuspecting insects you will look like all the other plants in the field.

If you ever notice people associating you with some past event or person, do everything you can do separate yourself from that memory and to shatter the reflection.

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.

☕The man who initiates strong reforms often becomes the scapegoat for any kind of dissatisfaction. →Eventually the reaction to his reforms may consume him, for change is upsetting to the human animal, even when it is for the good.

💎Never underestimate the hidden conservatism of those around you. It is powerful and entrenched.

If reform is necessary, anticipate the reaction against it and find ways to disguise the change and sweeten the poison. →Borrow the weight and legitimacy from the past, however remote, to create a comforting and familiar presence.

It is far easier, and less bloody, to play a kind of con game. Preach change as much as you like, and even enact your reforms, but give them the comforting appearance of older events and traditions.

💭”A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” — Max Planck

Pay lip service to tradition.
Play with appearances and respect past protocol.

If you work in a tumultuous time, there is power to be gained by preaching a return to the past, to comfort, tradition, and ritual. During a period of stagnation, on the other hand, play the card of reform and revolution.

💭”He who desires or attempts to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have to accepted, must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones. For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they were realities.” — Niccolo Machiavelli

If you make a bold change from the past, you must avoid at all costs the appearance of a void or vacuum, or you will create terror. Even an ugly recent history will seem preferable to an empty space. Fill that space immediately with new rituals and forms. Soothing and growing familiar, these will secure your position among the masses.

Using the past, tinkering with tradition, playing with convention to subvert it will give your creations something more than a momentary appeal.

Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults for 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.

Once envy eats away at someone, everything you do only makes it grow, and day by day it festers inside him. Eventually he will attack.

💭”It takes great talent and skill to conceal one’s talent and skill.” — La Rochefoucauld

💡Only a minority can succeed at the game of life.

💎Never underestimate the power of envy.

The insidious envy of the masses can actually be deflected quite easily:

💎Never be so foolish as to believe that you are stirring up admiration by flaunting the qualities that raise you above others.

💡The human animal has a hard time dealing with feelings of inferiority.

There are several strategies for dealing with the insidious destructive emotion of envy:

Subtly emphasize how lucky you have been, to make your happiness seem more attainable to other people, and the need for envy less acute.
⇒The act has to be good; your humility, and your openness to those you have left behind, have to seem genuine. Any hint of insincerity will only make your new status more oppressive.

Remember: Despite your elevated position, it will do you no good to alienate your former peers. Power requires a wide and solid support base, which envy can silently destroy.

Political power of any kind creates envy, and one of the best ways to deflect it before it takes root is to seem unambitious.

Disguise your power as a kind of self-sacrifice rather than a source of happiness and you make it seem enviable.
⇒A similar ploy is to hint that your good fortune will benefit those around you.

Beware of some of envy’s disguises.
→Excessive praise is an almost sure sign that the person praising you envies you.
→Those who are hypercritical of you, or who slander you publicly probably envies you as well.

Do not try to help or do favors for those who envy you; they will think you are condescending to them.
Once envy reveals itself for what it is, the only solution is often to flee the presence of the enviers.

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.

When you attain success, step back. Be cautious.
History is littered with the ruins of victorious empires and the corpses of leaders who could not learn to stop and consolidate their gains.

Success plays strange tricks on the mind.
It makes you feel invulnerable, while also making you more hostile and emotional when people challenge your power.
It makes you less able to adapt to circumstance.

You need to realize that your moment of triumph is also a moment when you have to rely on cunning and strategy all the more, consolidating your power base, recognizing the role of luck and circumstance in your success, and remaining vigilant against changes in your good fortune.

💭”The greatest danger occurs at the moment of victory.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

🔑The powerful vary their rhythms and patterns, change course, adapt to circumstance, and learn to improvise.

☕Step back and look where you are going.

Steady yourself. Give yourself the space to reflect on what has happened, examine the role of circumstance and luck in your success.

🔑You have to be able to control yourself before you can control the horse.

Luck and circumstance always play a role in power.

Despite what you may think, good luck is more dangerous than bad luck.
⇒Bad luck teaches valuable lessons about patience, timing, and the need to be prepared for the worst.
⇒Good luck deludes you into the opposite lesson, making you think your brilliance will carry you through.

💰There is no better time to stop and walk away than after a victory.

💭”Either destroy a man or leave him alone.” — Machiavelli

Inflicting half punishment or mild injury will only create an enemy whose bitterness will grow with time, and who will take revenge.
When you beat an enemy, make your victory complete.
Crush him into nonexistence.
In the moment of victory, you do not restrain yourself from crushing the enemy you have defeated, but rather from needlessly advancing against others.
Be merciless with your enemy, but do not create new enemies by overreaching.

Leave momentum for those who have nothing better to rely upon.

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. In martial arts, it is important that strategy be unfathomable, that form be concealed, and that movements be unexpected, so that preparedness against them be impossible. What enables a good general to win without fail is always having unfathomable wisdom and a modus operandi that leaves no tracks. Only the formless cannot be affected. Sages hide in unfathomability, so their feelings cannot be observed; they operate in formlessness, so their lines cannot be crossed.

In the evolution of species, protective armor has almost always spelled disaster.

🔑Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten.

💡Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.

Formlessness is the ultimate form of strategy. The war of engagement has become far too dangerous and costly; indirection and elusiveness yield far better results at a much lower cost.

In a world where wars of detachment are the order of the day, formlessness is crucial.
The first psychological requirement of formlessness is to train yourself to take nothing personally.
Never show any defensiveness.

🔑Train yourself to take nothing personally.

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 and adaptable, slowly insinuate yourself into their soul.
⇒To succeed at such a strategy you must play the chameleon; conform on the surface, while breaking down your enemy from the inside.

🔑The need for formlessness becomes greater the older we get, as we grow 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.

Your mind must constantly adapt to each circumstance, even the inevitable change that the time has come to move over and let those of younger age prepare for their ascendancy.
Rigidity will only make you look uncannily like a cadaver.

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.

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.

Rely too much on other people’s ideas and you end up taking a form not of your own making.
⇒Too much respect for other people’s wisdom will make your depreciate your own.
⇒Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.

💭”The consummation of forming an army is to arrive at formlessness. Victory in war is not repetitious, but adapts its form endlessly. The ability to gain victory by changing and adapting according to the opponent is called genius.” — Sun Tzu

When you play with formlessness, keep on top of the process, and keep your long-term strategy in mind. When you assume a form and go on the attack, use concentration, speed, and power.