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.
Everything changes. This is the key to feeling powerful, but also to being creative in the world.
In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it’s bad attention.
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.
You must bear in mind that each law is circumstantial. It does depend on the circumstances.
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.
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.
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.
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.
50 is a great person. I was a little intimidated when I met him for the first time in 2006. I didn’t know what to expect. It ended up we got along really well. That’s why we decided to do a book together, The 50th Law of Power.
We are a social animal, power only exists in a social sense, we have to work in groups.
You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it.
An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.
When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.
Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.
He who poses as a fool is not a fool.
Oysters open completely when the moon is full; and when the crab sees one it throws a piece of stone or seaweed into it and the oyster cannot close again so that it serves the crab for meat. Such is the fate of him who opens his mouth too much and thereby puts himself at the mercy of the listener. Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519.
By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others’ experience.
There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.