Top 500 Robert Greene Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “If you see yourself as an object, then others will too. An ethereal, dreamlike air will heighten the effect.”

— Robert Greene

402. “Leave martyrdom alone: The pendulum will swing back your way eventually, and you should stay alive to see it.”

— Robert Greene

403. “The world is ruled by necessity: People change their behavior only if they have to. They will feel urgency only if their lives depend on it.”

— Robert Greene

404. “Seduction implies opening yourself up, even if only for the purposes of deception; being unable to give by spending money usually means being unable to give in general. Stamp ungenerosity out. It is an impediment to power and a gross sin in seduction.”

— Robert Greene

405. “Never criticize people overtly – that will make them insecure, and resistant to change. Plant ideas, insinuate suggestions. Charmed by your diplomatic skills, people will not notice your growing power.”

— Robert Greene

406. “Remember: The powerful responses to niggling, petty annoyances and irritations are contempt and disdain. Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended – that only shows you have acknowledged a problem. Contempt is a dish that is best served cold and without affectation.”

— Robert Greene

407. “Seduction requires an openness to the other person, a willingness to bend and adapt. Excessive pride, without anything to justify it, is highly anti-seductive.”

— Robert Greene

408. “Through our work and through getting what we need on our own, without depending on others, we can stand tall and realize our potential as humans.”

— Robert Greene

409. “Nothing is more infuriating than being paid no attention. In the process of seduction, you may have to pull back at times, subjecting your target to moments of doubt. But prolonged inattention will not only break the seductive spell, it can create hatred.”

— Robert Greene

410. “The gods of power frown on the frivolous; they give ultimate satisfaction only to those who study and reflect, and punish those who skim the surfaces looking for a good time.”

— Robert Greene

411. “If you need inspiration, find the part of the target that most irritates you and use it as a springboard for some therapeutic conflict. The more real your cruelty, the more effective it is.”

— Robert Greene

412. “Your targets cannot idealize you if they know too much about you, if they start to see you as all too human. Not only must you maintain a degree of distance, but there must be something fantastical and bewitching about you, sparking all kinds of delightful possibilities in their mind.”

— Robert Greene

413. “Daily Law: Think back on the moments when you felt deeply and personally connected to an activity. Think about the pleasure it brought you. In such activities are signs of your true purpose. Mastery, I: Discover Your Calling – The Life’s Task.”

— Robert Greene

414. “The leader who tries to change the group’s spirit directly – yelling, demanding, disciplining – actually plays into the teenage dynamic and reinforces the desire to rebel.”

— Robert Greene

415. “The mind must not wander from goal to goal, or be distracted by success from its sense of purpose and proportion. What is concentrated, coherent, and connected to its past has power. What is dissipated, divided, and distended rots and falls to the ground. The bigger it bloats, the harder it falls.”

— Robert Greene

416. “This kind of feigned naturalness has countless applications in daily life, where nothing is more dangerous than looking smarter than the next person; the Natural pose is the perfect way to disguise your cleverness. But if you are uncontrollably childish and cannot turn it off, you run the risk of seeming pathetic, earning not sympathy but pity and disgust.”

— Robert Greene

417. “Do not be afraid to bring out the more sensitive or ambitious sides to your character. These repressed parts of you are yearning to be let out. In the theater of life, expand the roles that you play. Don’t worry about people’s reactions to any changes in you they sense. You are not so easy to categorize, which will fascinate them and give you the power to play with their perceptions of you, altering them at will.”

— Robert Greene

418. “Always make those above you feel comfortably superior.”

— Robert Greene

419. “Act before it becomes impossible to disentangle one strand of misery from another, or to see how the whole thing started.”

— Robert Greene

420. “What money should buy is not lifeless objects but power over people.”

— Robert Greene

421. “The Vulture. Of all the creatures in the jungle, he has it the easiest. The hard work of others becomes his work; their failure to survive becomes his nourishment. Keep an eye on the Vulture – while you are hard at work, he is circling above. Do not fight him, join him.”

— Robert Greene

422. “The game you want to play is different: to instead find a niche in the ecology that you can dominate.”

— Robert Greene

423. “50 Cent is a master player at power, a kind of hip-hop Napoleon Bonaparte.”

— Robert Greene

424. “Everything in daily life is hurried and improvised, and you need to offer something different. By taking your time and respecting the seductive process you will not only break down your victim’s resistance, you will make them fall in love.”

— Robert Greene

425. “Every time I bestow a vacant office I make a hundred discontented persons and one ingrate. Louis XIV, 1638-1715.”

— Robert Greene

426. “Thus for my own part I have more than once been deceived by the person I loved most and of whose love, above everyone else’s, I have been most confident. So that I believe that it may be right to love and serve one person above all others, according to merit and worth, but never to trust so much in this tempting trap of friendship as to have cause to repent of it later on. BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE, 1478-1529.”

— Robert Greene

427. “The problem in trying to prove a point or gain a victory through argument is that in the end you can never be certain how it affects the people you’re arguing with: They may appear to agree with you politely, but inside they may resent you.”

— Robert Greene

428. “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

429. “Absence diminishes minor passions and inflames great ones, as the wind douses a candle and fans a fire. La Rochefoucauld, 1613-1680 OBSERVANCE.”

— Robert Greene

430. “We have a continual desire to communicate our feelings and yet at the same time the need to conceal them for proper social functioning.”

— Robert Greene

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

— Robert Greene

432. “Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content, The quiet mind is richer than a crown...”

— Robert Greene

433. “There is nothing to be gained by insulting a person unnecessarily. Swallow the impulse to offend, even if the other person seems weak. The satisfaction is meager compared to the danger that someday he or she will be in a position to hurt you.”

— Robert Greene

434. “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

435. “Our continual connection to social media makes us prone to new forms of viral emotional effects. These are not media designed for calm reflection. With their constant presence, we have less and less mental space to step back and think.”

— Robert Greene

436. “Power is essentially amoral and one of the most important skills to acquire is the ability to see circumstances rather than good or evil. Power is a game – this cannot be repeated too often – and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effect of their actions.”

— Robert Greene

437. “Second, you must convince yourself of the following: people get the mind and quality of brain that they deserve through their actions in life.”

— Robert Greene

438. “Impatience, on the other hand, only makes you look weak. It is a principal impediment to power. Power.”

— Robert Greene

439. “It is the height of stupidity to believe that in the course of your short life, your few decades of consciousness, you can somehow rewire the configurations of your brain through technology and wishful thinking, overcoming the effect of six million years of development. To go against the grain might bring temporary distraction, but time will mercilessly expose your weakness and impatience.”

— Robert Greene

440. “Emotions cloud reason, and if you cannot see the situation clearly, you cannot prepare for and respond to it with any degree of control. Anger.”

— Robert Greene

441. “Making money or being successful should be a natural result of this ideal and not the goal itself.”

— Robert Greene

442. “Forgetting our objectives. – During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen and commenced as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent of all acts of stupidity. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844.”

— Robert Greene

443. “The secret enemy, though, will react with anger. Any strong emotion and you will know that there’s something boiling under the surface. Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.”

— Robert Greene

444. “The lesson is simple: it may be too late to be spoiled by a parent, but it is never too late to make other people spoil you. It is all in your attitude. People are drawn to those who expect a lot out of life, whereas they tend to disrespect those who are fearful and undemanding.”

— Robert Greene

445. “If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won’t catch on when you lead him into a trap.”

— Robert Greene

446. “Establishing your differences with the mentor is an important part of your self-development, whether he is of the good or bad parent type.”

— Robert Greene

447. “Your mind is the starting point of all war and all strategy. A mind that is easily overwhelmed by emotion, that is rooted in the past instead of the present, that cannot see the world with clarity and urgency, will create strategies that will always miss the mark.”

— Robert Greene

448. “When you are faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others.”

— Robert Greene

449. “You cannot hit two targets with one arrow. If your thoughts stray, you miss your enemies’ heart. Mind and arrow must become one.”

— Robert Greene

450. “We want to learn the lesson and not repeat the experience. But in truth, we do not like to look too closely at what we did; our introspection is limited. Our natural response is to blame others, circumstances, or a momentary lapse of judgment.”

— Robert Greene