Top 500 Robert Greene Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Never pick a fight with someone you’re not sure you can defeat.”

— Robert Greene

252. “The great questions of the time will be decided, not by speeches and resolutions of majorities, but by iron and blood.”

— Robert Greene

253. “Be like vapor. Do not give your opponents anything solid to attack; watch as they exhaust themselves pursuing you, trying to cope with your elusiveness. Only formlessness allows you to truly surprise your enemies – by the time they figure out where you are and what you are up to, it is too late.”

— Robert Greene

254. “The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents – will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?”

— Robert Greene

255. “Daily Law: No calling is superior to another. What matters is that it be tied to a personal need and inclination, and that your energy moves you toward improvement and continuous learning from experience. The Laws of Human Nature, 13: Advance with a Sense of Purpose – The Law of Aimlessness.”

— Robert Greene

256. “So often we think that power has changed people, when in fact it simply reveals more of who they are.”

— Robert Greene

257. “Never try to seduce someone who is of your own type. You will be like two puzzles missing the same parts.”

— Robert Greene

258. “If you feel lost and confused, if you lose your sense of direction, if you cannot tell the difference between friend and foe, you have only yourself to blame.”

— Robert Greene

259. “Always try to lower the other side’s sense of urgency. Make your enemies think they have all the time in the world; when you suddenly appear at their border, they are in a slumbering state, and you will easily overrun them. While you are sharpening your fighting spirit, always do what you can to blunt theirs. PART.”

— Robert Greene

260. “You will not seduce anyone by simply depending on your engaging personality, or by occasionally doing something noble or alluring. Seduction is a process that occurs over time – the longer you take and the slower you go, the deeper you will penetrate into the mind of your victim. It is an art that requires patience, focus, and strategic thinking. You need to always be one step ahead of your victim, throwing dust in their eyes, casting a spell, keeping them off balance.”

— Robert Greene

261. “Learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.”

— Robert Greene

262. “Spectacle and entertainment, clearly, are excellent devices to conceal your intentions, but they cannot be used indefinitely. The public grows tired and suspicious, and eventually catches on to the trick.”

— Robert Greene

263. “The environment we operate in may be different, but the brain is essentially the same, and its power to learn, adapt, and master time is universal.”

— Robert Greene

264. “Learn the lesson: Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under control. Be particularly careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay.”

— Robert Greene

265. “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

266. “Power is a game. This cannot be repeated too often!”

— Robert Greene

267. “Follow David’s example: say or do something that can be read in more than one way, that may be superficially polite but that could also indicate a slight coolness on your part or be seen as a subtle insult. A friend may wonder but will let it pass. The secret enemy, though, will react with anger.”

— Robert Greene

268. “You destroy an enemy when you make a friend of him.”

— Robert Greene

269. “To follow precisely the lead of others or advice from a book is self-defeating.”

— Robert Greene

270. “We are all self-absorbed, locked in our own worlds. It is a therapeutic and liberating experience to be drawn outside ourselves and into the world of another.”

— Robert Greene

271. “As I live I must die daily My old nature I must kill.”

— Robert Greene

272. “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

273. “Be Frugal with Flattery. It may seem that your superiors cannot get enough flattery, but too much of even a good thing loses its value. It also stirs up suspicion among your peers.”

— Robert Greene

274. “Immerse yourself in the world or the industry that you wish to master.”

— Robert Greene

275. “Remember: The paranoid and wary are often the easiest to deceive. Win their trust in one area and you have a smoke screen that blinds their view in another, letting you creep up and level them with a devastating blow.”

— Robert Greene

276. “Although it was pure luck that the book Improvement of the Mind fell into his hands, it took someone with such focus to recognize immediately its worth and exploit.”

— Robert Greene

277. “The infecting-character type is not restricted to women; it has nothing to do with gender.”

— Robert Greene

278. “That is the power of formlessness – it gives the aggressor nothing to react against, nothing to hit.”

— Robert Greene

279. “In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.”

— Robert Greene

280. “Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.”

— Robert Greene

281. “You are a blank screen. Float through life noncommittally and people will want to seize you and consume you. Of all the parts of your body that draw this fetishistic attention, the strongest is the face; so learn to tune your face like an instrument, making it radiate a fascinating vagueness for effect.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

283. “To be emperor of China was to be alone, surrounded by a pack of enemies – it was the least powerful, least secure position in the realm.”

— Robert Greene

284. “The Athenians were one of the most eminently practical people in history, and they made the most practical argument they could with the Melians: When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. No one comes to help the weak – by doing so they would only put themselves in jeopardy. The weak are alone and must submit. Fighting gives you nothing to gain but martyrdom, and in the process a lot of people who do not believe in your cause will die.”

— Robert Greene

285. “It has an edge because it is so different. Soon imitators pop up everywhere. It becomes a fashion, something to conform to, even if the comformity appears to be rebellious and edgy. This can drag on for ten, twenty years; it eventually becomes a cliche, ppure style without any real emotion or need.”

— Robert Greene

286. “The grammar of language locks us into certain forms of logic and ways of thinking. As the writer Sidney Hook put it, “When Aristotle drew up his table of categories which to him represented the grammar of existence, he was really projecting the grammar of the Greek language on the cosmos.” Linguists have enumerated the high number of concepts that have no particular word to describe them in the English language. If there are no words for certain concepts, we tend to not think of them.”

— Robert Greene

287. “Leonardo was eager to learn all of these skills, but soon he discovered in himself something else: he could not simply do an assignment; he needed to make it something of his own, to invent rather than imitate the Master.”

— Robert Greene

288. “In knowing yourself, you accept your limits. You are simply one person among many in the world, and not naturally superior to anyone.”

— Robert Greene

289. “The principle is simple and must be engraved deeply in your mind: the goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character – the first transformation on the way to mastery.”

— Robert Greene

290. “Express what others are afraid to express and they will see great power in you.”

— Robert Greene

291. “It is often your own actions that stir up envy, your own unawareness. By becoming conscious of those actions and qualities that create envy, you can take the teeth out of it before it nibbles you to death.”

— Robert Greene

292. “If they come from another culture, it is all the more important to understand this culture from within their experience.”

— Robert Greene

293. “Remember, your own image and presence are materials you can control. The sense that you are engaged in this kind of play will make people see you as superior and worthy of imitation.”

— Robert Greene

294. “His mind, he decided, worked best when he had several different projects at hand, allowing him to build all kinds of connections between them.”

— Robert Greene

295. “A seducer does not turn the power off and on – every social and personal interaction is seen as a potential seduction. There is never a moment to waste.”

— Robert Greene

296. “Daily Law: Embrace your strangeness. Identify what makes you different. Fuse those things together and become an anomaly.”

— Robert Greene

297. “Remember: seduction is a game of attention, of slowly filling the other person’s mind with your presence. Distance and inattention will create the opposite effect, and can be used as a tactic when the need arises.”

— Robert Greene

298. “To some people the notion of consciously playing power games – no matter how indirect – seems evil, asocial, a relic of the past. They believe they can opt out of the game by behaving in ways that have nothing to do with power. You must beware of such people, for while they express such opinions outwardly, they are often among the most adept players at power.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

300. “Every day you face battles – that is the reality for all creatures in their struggle to survive. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself – your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end.”

— Robert Greene