782 Quotes by Robert Greene

We are often attracted to the wrong things, whether it be money, fame, or approval.

Remember that the essence of authority is that people willingly follow your lead.

What matters in the Sun-tzu universe are not positions of strength and power, but situations in which you have options, full of potential force.

To hold an idea and convince ourselves we arrived at it rationally, we go in search of evidence to support our view.

Passive aggressors who are adept at this will have trained themselves to remain calm, while you get irritated and emotional.

Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.

You must keep raising this game to higher and higher levels, as on the pool table - mastering eventually the psychological angles. Your playing is a pleasure, all the way to the end, to death, when the game is over.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

Often people become our friend or follower with an undercurrent of resentment in our having more success than they have. They secretly desire the opportunity to take us down a notch; they have a nose for any misstep on our part they can exploit.