Top 404 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Greene
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English playwright Robert Greene.
Last updated on September 16, 2024.
If a subject excites us, if it stirs our deepest curiosity, or if we have to learn because the stakes are high, we pay much more attention. What we absorb sinks in.
To not follow your passion in life is a recipe for failure and unhappiness.
Remind yourself that winning an argument or proving your point really gets you nowhere in the long run. Win through your actions, not your words.
The great thing about America is that you can come from the worst circumstances and become something remarkable.
On a career level, I always advise people to look ahead and be open to changes in direction. That job that seems so good now can easily turn into a nightmare if you do not see the possible corners it can land you in.
Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.
To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two - to fix your opponent's expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.
With colleagues in the work environment, we fail to see the source of their envy or the reason for their manipulations; our attempts at influencing them are based on the assumptions that they want the same things as ourselves.
I went to an extreme for literary purposes because I felt all the self-help books out there were so gooey and Pollyanna-ish and nauseating. It was making me angry.
Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.
A person who is truly authentic doesn't need to play a role in life, we think, but can simply be him - or herself.
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.
Once people are aware of your presence, and perhaps vaguely intrigued, you need to stir their interest before it settles on someone else.
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. I'm older - I'm in my early 50s - so you'll have to excuse me. That was always very exciting to me to connect to the culture on that level.
Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don't. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.
Why regret anything? Where does it get you to regret anything you've ever done in your life? It gets you nowhere. It's a pathetic emotion that you can wallow in.
The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.
Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.
A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can't be naive.
Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.
If a person is successful, we imagine they are probably also ethical, conscientious and deserving of their good fortune. This obscures the fact that many people who get ahead have done so by doing less than moral actions, which they cleverly disguise from view.
If you're in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what's going on around you.
Stupidity and human incompetence are the great evils, not ambition and glory.
Always remember that your calmness under fire is your best defense in any argument or discussion.
Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.
Be extra careful in the work environment with those who like to maintain their position through charm and being political, rather than getting things done. They are very prone to envying and hating those who work hard and get results. They will slander and sabotage you without any warning.
Female psychotic bosses can be particularly devilish. They will tend to mix in a lot of passive aggression, making you feel guilty for all kinds of things.
A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It's part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.
The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.
I don't want to throw mud at anyone - I really admire Gandhi as a brilliant strategist - but Gandhi was pretty manipulative, you know.
I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.
The authority you establish must emerge naturally from your character, from the particular strengths you possess.
For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.
Transforming yourself into a deep listener will not only prove more amusing as you open your mind to their mind, but you will gain the most invaluable lessons about human psychology.
Ambition has become a dirty word, and I believe it is a great evolutionary force for the positive. If people fail or go astray in their ambition I can live with it but not with people lowering their expectations, wasting time, slacking off and glorifying failure and stupidity.
I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.
Remember: your bosses prefer to keep you in dependent positions. It is in their interest that you do not become self-reliant, and so they will tend to hoard information. You must secretly work against this and seize this information for yourself.
Your energy, your spirit are important considerations. Feeling petty and frustrated can have reverberating consequences for your ability to think strategically and reach your goals.
When I say 'Crush your enemy', I don't literally mean it.
Evil or manipulative people don't need a book, they just do it anyway.
What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It's not an intellectual thing. It's almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.
When I was researching my book 'The 33 Strategies of War', I studied Napoleon extensively and I found myself wanting to ask Napoleon questions about things he did, and if was I interpreting his actions correctly.
I remember I was flying home to Los Angeles one day. I was talking to the woman next to me and the flight attendant tried to tell me I was sitting next to somebody that I should know. I didn't recognize her but it ended up being Beyonce's sister, Solange Knowles.
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable.
We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.
An elusive, enigmatic aura will make people want to know more, drawing them into your circle. Create such a power by hinting at something contradictory within you.
Mastery, I learned, was not something genetic, or for a lucky few. It is something we can all attain if get rid of some misconceptions and gain clarity as to the required path.
I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.
I'd done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.
I'm not who people expect me to be. I'm not Henry Kissinger.
Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and then maybe I bring sort of my knowledge of power into play.
The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don't be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.
When you get angry, your options narrow.
In the world today, we humans have become more self-absorbed, more tribal and tenacious in holding on to our narrow agendas; we have become consumed by the barrage of information inundating us; we are even more fickle when it comes to leaders.
I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what's going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.
The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.
Weak character will neutralize all of the other possible good qualities a person might possess.
Over the years I've met quite a few big rappers. Then it exploded with 50 Cent, and I did a book with him. It's always a strange meeting of two worlds, it's very exciting.
Ethics and power are separate.
Plumbers can be masters, the guy who did my patio is a master, some people are masters at raising really great children.
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