Robert Greene Quotes - Page 4

We happen to live in an era that is incredibly wrapped up in notions of political correctness; everything is seen through the lens of politics. But being political and politically correct is just another way of fighting, another form of power and strategy, an insidious means of manipulation.

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.

One could draw up all different kinds of adversity depending on what your weakness is.

If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

When you have any kind of success in life, that's like the most dangerous moment that you're in because you're going to tend to think wow, I can just keep repeating what I've done. I'm a great person. People love me. All of the sudden they're giving me all of this attention. You get drunk on it and you lose your sense of balance and your sense of detachment. I know it's happened to me.

In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.

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

People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.

Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual — the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them — they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

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.

Everybody knows what they were kind of drawn towards or what they're gifted at and it's more of courage and looking at yourself and saying, "I'm going to try something and move back in that direction." So it's less of an intellectual problem and it's more of an emotional problem because as you get into your 30's and 40's you get addicted to a paycheck and a comfort and you delude yourself into thinking this is what my life is and you lack the guts to be honest with yourself and to make that change.

Be as fluid as water, do not give your enemies anything solid to atack

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

You are facing death and danger and competition, but at any moment, you can decide to have a fearless mindset.

You have a set of skills, a way of looking at the world, and often in childhood it was revealed to you by things that you were just kind of naturally drawn to.

There's physical adversity, that if you are someone that likes exercise like I do, I exercise everyday. When you exercise, there's pain involved and so you're putting yourself through adversity in that situation. It's never totally pleasurable and there are moments where it's kind of boring or painful and you know that in doing that, you're making your mind and body tougher and more resilient. So must be able to deal with the boredom that happens in life.

Nothing is given to you.

Do not envy those who seem to be naturally gifted; it is often a curse, as such types rarely learn the value of diligence and focus, and they pay for this later in life.

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

No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you.

If you're not careful people will judge you based on these appearances and they will pigeon hole you that this is the person that you are. Your shy, your aggressive, your this type or that type and you lose the control of the dynamic, they become the ones that determine who you are. A powerful person never loses control of the dynamic they are in someway in control.

Being the free woman who is sexy and out there is a performance in a way, and being the stay-at-home mom and wife is a performance in itself. All of those performances are living and force you to make decisions about who you really are. Women have to put those performances ahead of things sometimes. Men aren't perceived in the same way.

You could have a lot of money at your fingertips, the finest education and intellectual knowledge, but if you are governed by fear none of that will matter. You will remain tied to dead ideas and stale strategies. You will not be able to adapt. You will lose what you have.