Robert Greene famous quotes

It is in fact the height of selfishness to merely consume what others create and to retreat into a shell of limited goals and immediate pleasures.
-- Robert Greene

#Goal #Selfishness #Height

Nobody is born without fear. We are all born into this world screaming and crying, a bloody mess. We're afraid of failing. What differentiates people is that some of them tend to deal more with fearful situations and understand that it's hurting them in life. That by becoming fearful they're maiming themselves and they learn to move past these fears.
-- Robert Greene

#Hurt #Moving #Past

Understand: people will constantly attack you in life. One of their main weapons will be to instill in you doubts about yourself – your worth, your abilities, your potential. They will often disguise this as their objective opinion, but invariably it has a political purpose – they want to keep you down.
-- Robert Greene

#People #Political #Doubt

If I could simplify the whole game of power and strategy in one equation, it would all hinge on the capacity to see events around you exactly as they are. The closer your mind is to reality, the better your strategies, your responses in life.
-- Robert Greene

#Reality #Games #Mind

Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
-- Robert Greene

#Smart #Order #Perfect

The key to success in any kind of start up is your level of persistence. It's not so much your intellect. The Zuckerburg's, Pages and Brins, that succeed have such a level of belief in what they are doing that they will put up with the kind of crap that most people won't put up with, they are incredibly persistent and resilient.
-- Robert Greene

#Persistence #Keys #People

Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
-- Robert Greene

#Character #Identity #Roles

If you're just letting the time pass at your job, it's just dead time and you'll never get it back. If at that job you're learning and you're observing and you're seeing about people and connections, it's suddenly alive time.
-- Robert Greene

#Jobs #People #Alive

Understand: you are one of a kind. Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history. There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses. You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.
-- Robert Greene

#Character #Unique #Thinking

When people are too present, too familiar or too in our face, something happens to us psychologically. We begin to tune them out, we begin to get sick of them, we begin to know them so well and become so familiar with who they are that we loose a bit of respect for them. You pass a certain threshold with the fact that you're too present in their lives, too much in their face and once that threshold is passed you're never going to repair it they have lost a certain respect for you.
-- Robert Greene

#Sick #People #Too Much

Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.
-- Robert Greene

#Trying #Complaining #Justify

A lot of things in history are timing, and it's very peculiar because in retrospect things [and] people can look more brilliant or necessary than they actually were.
-- Robert Greene

#People #Looks #Retrospect

When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity... you cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others
-- Robert Greene

#Envy #Worry #Feelings

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Complaining #Worst #Humans

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.
-- Robert Greene

#Fear #Sides #Kind

You're always feeling powerless in life. If you're in an abusive relationship or working for what we call a psychotic boss sometimes the only option is to leave because you're emotions get so entangled with these manipulative people that staying there you're just helpless because they're good at passive aggressive games and you're not, so you have to leave.
-- Robert Greene

#Games #People #Boss

Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks [...]. In reality, Cleopatra was physically unexceptional and had no political power, yet both Caesar and Antony, brave and clever men, saw none of this. What they saw was a woman who constantly transformed herself before their eyes, a one-woman spectacle.Her dress and makeup changed from day to day, but always gave her a heightened, goddesslike appearance. Her words could be banal enough, but were spoken so sweetly that listeners would find themselves remembering not what she said but how she said it.
-- Robert Greene

#Clever #Lying #Eye

It's good to have a brand that is consistent that people know about and trust. But it's also good to mix it up and adapt it, to polish it a bit and give it a new aspect. To not violate the reputation you've established but give it a new edge and veneer to show other aspects that people hadn't suspected.
-- Robert Greene

#Giving #People #Reputation

Mastery is not a function of genius or talent. It is a function of time and intense focus applied to a particular field of knowledge.
-- Robert Greene

#Focus #Genius #Fields

I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride.
-- Robert Greene

#War #Hate #Pride

Only create associations with positive affinities. Make this a rule of life and you will benefit more than from all the therapy in the world.
-- Robert Greene

#World #Association #Benefits

People want to feel united, they want to have that religious sense they want to feel like at a rave 10,000 people at the rave are feeling the same emotions, a very primal need that's not being fulfilled in the world today.
-- Robert Greene

#Religious #People #Feelings

Her lips are roses over-washed with dew, Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower; No frost their fair, no wind doth waste their power, But by her breath her beauties to renew.
-- Robert Greene

#Flower #Wind #Purple

Be Royal in your Own Fashion: Act like a King to be treated
-- Robert Greene

#Fashion #Kings #Royal

You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.
-- Robert Greene

#Your Future #Be Prepared #Headings

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Strong #Sheep #People

Most people are passive aggressive in this world. I have the idea that the human being is born with a kind of reservoir of aggression. We are inherently somewhat aggressive creatures and we either channel that in direct ways or we channel it in indirect ways and become passive aggressive.
-- Robert Greene

#Ideas #People #World

Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent
-- Robert Greene

If you want to be powerful in life you have to enjoy the process. You have to get pleasure out of making the thing that you're making. There has to be that kind of purpose behind it. If your purpose is simply gaining power, if that becomes your end in life then you end up sort of destroying yourself because you lose the sense of detachment that's very necessary.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #Purpose #Want

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.
-- Robert Greene

#Art #Goal #Focus

Your ability to work with people directly affects your ability to get work done in the world.
-- Robert Greene

#People #Done #World

Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter
-- Robert Greene

#Sheep #Shepherds #Strikes

When you understand the fear then you can begin to move past it. So when I hear the people say it's innate, you can't learn it, I just want to hit them in the head.
-- Robert Greene

#Moving #Past #People

Few are born bold. Even Napoleon had to cultivate the habit on the battlefield, where he knew it was a matter of life and death. In social settings he was awkward and timid, but he overcame this and practice boldness in every part of his life because he saw its tremendous power, how it could literally enlarge a man(even one who, like Napoleon, was in fact conspicuously small).
-- Robert Greene

#Men #Practice #Life And Death

When someone is not there all the time it gives us space to think about them. Your job in influence and persuasion is to get the other person to think about you or your product without you forcing yourself upon them or without you making them think about you.
-- Robert Greene

#Jobs #Thinking #Space

Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory. The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #Thinking #Victory

I have an argument that to master any field, it's simple: it's a function of time. How much you devote yourself to the process, how much experience you get, how much you're willing to expand your limits, how willing you are to develop your own style. If you're willing to put 10,000 hours, something amazing is going to happen.
-- Robert Greene

#Simple #Style #Limits

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.
-- Robert Greene

#People #Broken #Moments

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #Judging #People

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.
-- Robert Greene

#Media #Skills #Discipline

There is a tremendous problem in modern culture. We have become used to everything coming to us with tremendous speed and ease. It is a culture where discipline and patience is almost impossible to develop.
-- Robert Greene

#Discipline #Culture #Ease

Become who you are by learning who you are.
-- Robert Greene

#Who You Are

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

#Games #People #Finding Yourself

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

#Enemy #Way

We are a social animal, power only exists in a social sense, we have to work in groups.
-- Robert Greene

#Animal #Groups #Social

The Crown. Place it upon your head and you assume a different post-tranquil yet radiating assurance. Never show doubt, never lose your dignity beneath the crown, or it will not fit. It will seem to be destined for one more worthy. Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emporers crown themselves.
-- Robert Greene

#Waiting #Doubt #Crowns

If you are armed with knowledge, if you are aware that certain dynamics are at play then you have options. You can play defense, you can ignore certain person and take the consequences perhaps with a game plan in mind and it goes on, you've increased your options.
-- Robert Greene

#Games #Play #Mind

Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power
-- Robert Greene

#Art #Civilization #Games

Practically every profession has a really political environment. I think the world has become more competitive. There are so many people in every place competing for small slices of success and power. It's a heated atmosphere and whenever you have competition, you're going to have more politics and manipulation.
-- Robert Greene

#Thinking #People #Political

Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feel motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.
-- Robert Greene

#Persistence #Bored #Feelings

Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.
-- Robert Greene

#Art #Power #Keys

You can never get rid of all of your fears. Some are necessary and a part of life. But most of our fears are illusory, based on risks or threats that exist only in our minds. Such fears constrain and make you miserable. The feeling of moving past a particular fear is one of liberation and freedom.
-- Robert Greene

#Moving #Past #Feelings

The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed.
-- Robert Greene

#Want #Roles In Life #World

There is something I call social intelligence. You can do a lot in life on your own and you can do all kinds of stuff, but if you're really bad with people, if you're really naive or aggressive and push people away, if you don't know the political environment you're in, it invalidates all the things you know. You're not going to get anywhere.
-- Robert Greene

#People #Political #Stuff

Animals behave in set patterns, which is why we are able to hunt and kill them. Only man has the capacity to consciously alter his behavior, to improvise and overcome the weight of routine and habit.
-- Robert Greene

#Men #Animal #Routine

If you're in a subordinate position of some sort and pretty much all of us are at some point in our lives, your general tendency is to try and impress the people above you or person above you so well that they will like you, keep you or maybe promote you. In the process of doing that you are not aware that that person above has insecurities and if you try so hard they may see that you are after their job or that you are better than they are or they might envy the fact you are younger.
-- Robert Greene

#Jobs #Envy #People

Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.
-- Robert Greene

#Enemy #Care #Lord

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

#Marketing #Niche #Scales

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #People #Trying

Everything changes. This is the key to feeling powerful, but also to being creative in the world.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #Keys #Creative

For the future, the motto is, "No days unalert."
-- Robert Greene

#Future #Motto

A lot of the things that involve power on the highest levels sometimes involve the darker side of human psychology. People can be very passive aggressive or they can be aggressive and they can conceal their intentions. There's this world that exists that nobody writes about or describes it's like a dirty little secret or taboo.
-- Robert Greene

#Dirty #Writing #People

Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.
-- Robert Greene

#Mistake #Mean #Inadequacy

Life goes by very fast. And the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you're not creative with and you're not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.
-- Robert Greene

#Jobs #Hate #Thinking

There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.
-- Robert Greene

#Victory #Dangerous

If you're consumed only with the big dream, you're going to die because you won't be able to feed yourself or you're going to be losing your job, so you'll just be sitting in your room dreaming, but if you're only holding onto the crap jobs that keep you just above of the water you're going to be unhappy. You're going to be burnt out, washed out.
-- Robert Greene

#Dream #Jobs #Water

Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.
-- Robert Greene

#Pride #People #Worry

I believe that everybody was born with a kind of uniqueness. There is never going to be somebody else with the same DNA as you, with the same experiences. There is something that you were meant to do as an individual. You have some kind of creative skill. It can either be creating your own business in some level, being a writer, an artist, whatever, or it can even be working within a company, but from within that company you're creating something.
-- Robert Greene

#Believe #Artist #Dna

The key to power, then, is the ability to judge who is best able to further your interests in all situations. Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
-- Robert Greene

#Keys #Judging #Able

If you're in your early twenties, don't put so much importance on the money, on the raise. Getting an extra thousand dollars a year is okay, but the real thing is the responsibility and the power and the experience that you're learning.
-- Robert Greene

#Real #Responsibility #Years

Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being
-- Robert Greene

#Animal #Important #Reason

I'm a big believer in being an entrepreneur. It's easy for me to say because I work for myself and I am someone who likes that process. You have control over your destiny.
-- Robert Greene

#Destiny #Entrepreneur #Over You

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

#Character #Self #Creative

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Thinking #Drunk #Giving

The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
-- Robert Greene

#Skills #Creative #Way

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Play #Worry #People

You want attention, you want to grab some of that airspace that exists out there in a world that's very difficult to get it because it's so competitive and to get it for more than a few seconds. Any attention is good and that can be what we would normally consider as bad attention so I wanted to make you aware of that dynamic.
-- Robert Greene

#World #Want #Attention

You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.
-- Robert Greene

#Firsts #World #Worthwhile

We're selfish to some degree, that's not a criticism and it doesn't mean that we are all narcissists. But in any situation our minds naturally evolve to what's in it for me? How does this affect me? Can this benefit me? Can this harm me? Then we might move on from that and have a more altruistic point of view about things but that's almost always our initial response.
-- Robert Greene

#Selfish #Moving #Mean

Any titles, money, or privilege you inherit are actually hindrances. They delude you into believing you are owed respect.
-- Robert Greene

#Believe #Privilege #Titles

You have the power to think differently about who you are. You have the ability to turn off the critical voice inside of you. That's not you. That's coming from the culture. That's coming from the outside of you. You've internalized the voice of your parents, your teachers, your friends.
-- Robert Greene

#Teacher #Thinking #Voice

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus.
-- Robert Greene

#Focus #Mastery #Intensity

As a writer you know you don't have to deal with a lot of the crap that most people deal with, the political things. Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and that's it.
-- Robert Greene

#Couple #Book #Fighting

When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.
-- Robert Greene

#Emotion #Trouble

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.
-- Robert Greene

#Ideas #Intellectual #Matter

Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.
-- Robert Greene

#Honesty #Air #Quality

You must bear in mind that each law is circumstantial. It does depend on the circumstances.
-- Robert Greene

#Law #Mind #Bears

Think of it this way: There are two kinds of failure. The first comes from never trying out your ideas because you are afraid, or because you are waiting for the perfect time. This kind of failure you can never learn from, and such timidity will destroy you. The second kind comes from a bold and venturesome spirit. If you fail in this way, the hit that you take to your reputation is greatly outweighed by what you learn. Repeated failure will toughen your spirit and show you with absolute clarity how things must be done.
-- Robert Greene

#Thinking #Ideas #Two

In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it's bad attention.
-- Robert Greene

#Careers #Want #Attention

If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox way, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.They will find away to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
-- Robert Greene

#Thinking #Ideas #Appreciate

I don't want to promote paranoia. It's not like wow, everybody is after me. You know that's not going to be very powerful. A person like Stalin was like that and he was powerful, but it ended up completely destroying him because he couldn't trust anyone.
-- Robert Greene

#Powerful #Want #Wow

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

#Opinion #Influence #Raises

The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.
-- Robert Greene

#Creating #Mind #Information

Those qualities that separate us are often ridiculed by others or criticized by teachers. Because of these judgments, we might see our strengths as disabilities and try to work around them in order to fit in. But anything that is peculiar to our makeup is precisely what we must pay the deepest attention to and lean on in our rise to mastery.
-- Robert Greene

#Teacher #Makeup #Order

Thy breath is like the steame of apple-pyes.
-- Robert Greene

#Apples #Dessert

Real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.
-- Robert Greene

#Real #Action #Charm

Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.
-- Robert Greene

#Expansion #Relentless #Pursuit

Always say less than necessary.
-- Robert Greene

What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth. Leaving things to chance is a recipe for disaster, and reveals that we do not take love and romance very seriously.
-- Robert Greene

#Effort #Romance #Leaving