782 Quotes by Robert Greene

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

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

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

If deception is the most potent weapon in your arsenal, then patience in all things is your crucial shield.

We force ourselves to step outside our inner chamber of habitual thoughts and connect to the world, to other people, to reality.

People’s need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important, is the best kind of weakness to exploit. First, it is almost universal; second, exploiting it is so very easy. All you have to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence.

I’ve always loved black culture; I don’t know any other way to put it. Since I was a kid I loved music and early jazz, Sly and the Family Stone.

So after that I had a new rule. If I’m hired by the plant engineer, I only go over his head if I’m in project failure mode. If the project is going to fail, then I’ll go over his head. But as long as the project is going to come out, I never go over his head. Now, that’s a rule I still follow today.

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