Top 500 Robert Greene Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “The truth is that everything starts from the top. What determines your failure or success is your style of leadership and the chain of command that you design.”

— Robert Greene

152. “What people lack in life is not more reality but illusion, fantasy, play.”

— Robert Greene

153. “Man will only become better when you make him see what he is like. – Anton Chekhov.”

— Robert Greene

154. “A man said to a Dervish: “Why do I not see you more often?” The Dervish replied, “Because the words ‘Why have you not been to see me?’ are sweeter to my ear than the words ‘Why have you come again?”

— Robert Greene

155. “The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.”

— Robert Greene

156. “Your days are numbered. Will you pass them half awake and halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency?”

— Robert Greene

157. “You must bear in mind that each law is circumstantial. It does depend on the circumstances.”

— Robert Greene

158. “You must avoid at all cost the idea that you can manage learning several skills at a time. You need to develop your powers of concentration, and understand that trying to multitask will be the death of the process.”

— Robert Greene

159. “You cannot repress anger or love, or avoid feeling them, and you should not try.”

— Robert Greene

160. “Finally, you must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line.”

— Robert Greene

161. “Realize this: In your struggle for power you will stir up rivalries and create enemies. There will be people you cannot win over, who will remain your enemies no matter what.”

— Robert Greene

162. “A man grows bored with a woman, no matter how beautiful; he yearns for different pleasures, and for adventure.”

— Robert Greene

163. “Remember: 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.”

— Robert Greene

164. “It is your own bad strategies, not the unfair opponent, that are to blame for your failures. You are responsible for the good and bad in your life.”

— Robert Greene

165. “Be a flame of positive emotions and you will never be without a friend.”

— Robert Greene

166. “Compelling spectacles are not to reach a niche market, it could be for reaching a niche marketing but on a grand scale. This is for grand marketing.”

— Robert Greene

167. “When people choose between talk about the past and talk about the future, a pragmatic person will always opt for the future and forget the past.”

— Robert Greene

168. “Remember: the greatest danger you face in the world today is that you are replaceable. As you get older, people who are younger, cheaper and more in tune with trends are rising up and threatening your position. Your only salvation is to mine your uniqueness, to combine various skills that set you apart. No one can do what you do. That is your endgame.”

— Robert Greene

169. “The truth is that creative activity is one that involves the entire self – our emotions, our levels of energy, our characters, and our minds.”

— Robert Greene

170. “Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil.”

— Robert Greene

171. “If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you were fated to become – an individual, a Master.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

173. “Results are important, but the way they are achieved, the process, is equally important.”

— Robert Greene

174. “Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.”

— Robert Greene

175. “Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction.”

— Robert Greene

176. “Do not swallow the easy moralism of the day, which urges honesty at the expense of desirability.”

— Robert Greene

177. “Seduction is a form of deception, but people want to be led astray, they yearn to be seduced. If they didn’t, seducers would not find so many willing victims. Get rid of any moralizing tendencies, adopt the seducer’s playful philosophy, and you will find the rest of the process easy and natural.”

— Robert Greene

178. “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.”

— Robert Greene

179. “Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten. The best way to avoid this fate is to assume formlessness. No predator alive can attack what it cannot see. OBSERVANCE.”

— Robert Greene

180. “Sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security.”

— Robert Greene

181. “Our times might emphasize equality, which we then mistake for the need for everyone to be the same, but what we really mean by this is the equal chance for people to express their differences, to let a thousand flowers bloom.”

— Robert Greene

182. “Not to become someone else, but to be more thoroughly yourself.”

— Robert Greene

183. “Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers.”

— Robert Greene

184. “The most important of these skills, and power’s crucial foundation, is the ability to master your emotions. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

186. “Image: An Oak Tree. The oak that resists the wind loses its branches one by one, and with nothing left to protect it, the trunk fi nally snaps. The oak that bends lives long er, its trunk grow ing wider, its roots deeper and more tenacious.”

— Robert Greene

187. “What I fear is not the enemy’s strategy but our own mistakes.”

— Robert Greene

188. “Hesitation creates gaps. Boldness obliterates them.”

— Robert Greene

189. “The only real impediment to this is yourself and your emotions – boredom, panic, frustration, insecurity. You cannot suppress such emotions – they are normal to the process and are experienced by everyone, including Masters. What you can do is have faith in the process.”

— Robert Greene

190. “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. Plan in detail before you act – do not let vague plans lead you into trouble.”

— Robert Greene

191. “Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower.”

— Robert Greene

192. “You can’t disengage yourself from that game if you are completely unaware of what people out there might be doing, you’re just going to be tripped up, you’re going to find yourself continually at a disadvantage.”

— Robert Greene

193. “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

— Robert Greene

194. “A person in love will surrender.”

— Robert Greene

195. “Creative Endeavors are by their nature uncertain.”

— Robert Greene

196. “Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic – it makes people come to you.”

— Robert Greene

197. “For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.”

— Robert Greene

198. “No greater mischief could be wrought Than love united to a jealous thought.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

200. “Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target.”

— Robert Greene