Top 500 Robert Greene Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “It is not much good being wise among fools and sane among lunatics.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

153. “50 is a great person. I was a little intimidated when I met him for the first time in 2006. I didn’t know what to expect. It ended up we got along really well. That’s why we decided to do a book together, The 50th Law of Power.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

155. “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

156. “The feeling that we have endless time to complete our work has an insidious and debilitating effect on our minds. Our attention and thoughts become diffused. Our lack of intensity makes it hard for the brain to jolt into a higher gear. The connections do not occur. For this purpose you must always try to work with deadlines, whether real or manufactured.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

158. “On woman Nature did bestow two eyes, Like Hemian’s bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise And wary heads, made rare by art’s refining.”

— Robert Greene

159. “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.”

— Robert Greene

160. “Great strategists do not act according to preconceived ideas; they respond to the moment, like children. Their minds are always moving, and they are always excited and curious. They quickly forget the past – the present is much too interesting.”

— Robert Greene

161. “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

162. “When the evening began, Fouquet was at the top of the world. By the time it had ended, he was at the bottom. Voltaire, 1694-1778.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

164. “We see people not as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.”

— Robert Greene

165. “A seduction should never settle into a comfortable routine. The middle and later chapters will instruct you in the art of alternating hope and despair, pleasure and pain, until your victims weaken and succumb.”

— Robert Greene

166. “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

167. “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

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

— Robert Greene

169. “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

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

— Robert Greene

171. “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

172. “If you lose contact with this inner calling, you can have some success in life, but eventually your lack of true desire catches up with you. Your work becomes mechanical. You come to live for leisure and immediate pleasures. In this way you become increasingly passive, and never move past the first phase. You may grow frustrated and depressed, never realizing that the source of it is your alienation from your own creative potential.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

174. “Excuses satisfy no one and apologies make everyone uncomfortable.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

176. “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

177. “The world is full of self-absorbed people. In their presence, we know that everything in our relationship with them is directed toward themselves – their insecurities, their neediness, their hunger for attention.”

— Robert Greene

178. “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

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

— Robert Greene

180. “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

181. “A person in love will surrender.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

183. “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

184. “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

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

— Robert Greene

186. “You may have brilliant ideas, the kind that could revolutionize the world, but unless you can express them effectively, they will have no force, no power to enter people’s minds in a deep and lasting way.”

— Robert Greene

187. “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

188. “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

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

191. “As Abraham Lincoln said, “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

— Robert Greene

192. “Work at what connects to you emotionally and ideas will come to you.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

195. “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

196. “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

197. “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

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

— Robert Greene

199. “Without a worthy opponent a man or group cannot grow stronger.”

— Robert Greene

200. “For Pericles it would be nous, the ancient Greek word for “mind” or “intelligence.” Nous is a force that permeates the universe, creating meaning and order. The human mind is naturally attracted to this order; this is the source of our intelligence. For.”

— Robert Greene