Top 500 Robert Greene Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If I could simplify the whole game of power and strategy in one equation, it would all hinge on the capacity to see events around you exactly as they are. The closer your mind is to reality, the better your strategies, your responses in life.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

53. “If you’re in your early twenties, don’t put so much importance on the money, on the raise. Getting an extra thousand dollars a year is okay, but the real thing is the responsibility and the power and the experience that you’re learning.”

— Robert Greene

54. “Your work is the single greatest means at your disposal for expressing your social intelligence.”

— Robert Greene

55. “What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster, and reveals that we do not take love and romance very seriously.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

59. “In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it’s bad attention.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

62. “Never be put off by your target’s anger; it is a sure sign of enslavement.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

65. “If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

67. “When we are tired, it is often because we are bored. When no real challenge faces us, a mental and physical lethargy sets in. “Sometimes death only comes from a lack of energy,” Napoleon once said, and lack of energy comes from a lack of challenges, comes when we have taken on less than we are capable of.”

— Robert Greene

68. “When you understand the fear then you can begin to move past it. So when I hear the people say it’s innate, you can’t learn it, I just want to hit them in the head.”

— Robert Greene

69. “Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

71. “Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

73. “When you raise your opinion of yourself and what you are capable of it has a decided influence on what you do.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

75. “Everything changes. This is the key to feeling powerful, but also to being creative in the world.”

— Robert Greene

76. “You are your own worst enemy. You waste precious time dreaming of the future instead of engaging in the present. Since nothing seems urgent to you, you are only half involved in what you do. The only way to change is through action and outside pressure.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

78. “The worst thing is to sit and whine and complain and obsess about money as if that were the only sign of your worth as a human.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

85. “Everybody in life is struggling for power, and some people use morality and righteousness as a weapon, while others use different means, even passive aggression. From a distance, we are all fighting, and I am looking at this from a distance.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

87. “I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.”

— Robert Greene

88. “Real pleasure comes from overcoming challenges, feeling confidence in your abilities, gaining fluency in skills, and experiencing the power this brings. You develop patience. Boredom no longer signals the need for distraction, but rather the need for new challenges to conquer.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

90. “Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

92. “A noble mind disdains to hide his head, And let his foes triumph in his overthrow.”

— Robert Greene

93. “News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite.”

— Robert Greene

94. “A mind content both crown and kingdom is.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

97. “I’m a big believer in being an entrepreneur. It’s easy for me to say because I work for myself and I am someone who likes that process. You have control over your destiny.”

— Robert Greene

98. “Hangs in the uncertain balance of proud time.”

— Robert Greene

99. “It takes great talent and skill to conceal one’s talent and skill. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1613–1680 Halliwell.”

— Robert Greene

100. “Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared. Victory over your enemies will bring you a more lasting popularity.”

— Robert Greene