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Robert Greene Quotes

65 of the best book quotes from Robert Greene
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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.
Robert Greene
author
48 Laws of Power
book
impress
impressing others
concepts
02
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Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.
03
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Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.
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Envy creates silent enemies. 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.
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Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.
06
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Never Appear Too Perfect
07
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Always Say Less Than Necessary
08
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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.
09
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The human tongue is a beast that few can master. It strains constantly to break out of its cage, and if it is not tamed, it will tun wild and cause you grief.
10
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Never waste valuable time, or mental peace of mind, on the affairs of others—that is too high a price to pay.
11
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Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.
12
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There is nothing more intoxicating than victory, and nothing more dangerous.
13
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Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter.
14
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Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.
15
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Despise The Free Lunch
16
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A person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.
17
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When you show yourself to the world and display your talents, you naturally stir all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity.
18
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You cannot spend your life worrying about the petty feelings of others.
19
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The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
20
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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.
21
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If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.
22
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If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution.
23
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Keep your friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
24
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Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses.
25
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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.
26
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“Never force the physical; instead infect your targets with heat, lure them into lust. Morality, judgment, and concern for the future will all melt away.”
27
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“An isolated person is weak. By slowly isolating your victims, you make them more vulnerable to your influence. Take them away from their normal milieu, friends, family, home. Give them the sense of being marginalized, in limbo? ”
28
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“Targets with active minds are dangerous: If they see through your manipulations, they may suddenly develop doubts. Put their minds gently to rest, and waken their dormant senses, by combining a non-defensive attitude with a charged sexual presence.”
29
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“Instead, lure them out of their insecurities by making them focus on something sublime and spiritual: a religious experience, a lofty work of art, the occult. ”
30
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“People who have experienced a certain kind of pleasure in the past will try to repeat or relive it. The deepest-rooted and most pleasurable memories are usually those from earliest childhood, and are often unconsciously associated with a parental figure. ”
31
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“While your cool, nonchalant air is lowering their inhibitions, your glances, voice, and bearing? oozing sex and desire? are getting under their skin and raising their temperature. ”
32
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“Everyone has doubts and insecurities? about their body, their self-worth, their sexuality. If your seduction appeals exclusively to the physical, you will stir up these doubts and make your targets self-conscious.”
33
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“Bring your targets back to that point by placing yourself in the oedipal triangle and positioning them as the needy child. Unaware of the cause of their emotional response, they will fall in love with you.”
34
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“Lost in a spiritual mist, the target will feel light and uninhibited. Deepen the effect of your seduction by making its sexual culmination seem like the spiritual union of two souls.”
35
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“They are leaving one world behind and entering another. Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confusion they are easily led astray.”
36
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“Slightest feeling of relief that you are not there, and it is all over. Familiarity and overexposure will cause this reaction. Remain elusive, then. Intrigue your targets by alternating an exciting presence with a cool distance, exuberant moments followed by calculated absences.”
37
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“Associate yourself with poetic images and objects, so that when they think of you, they begin to see you through an idealized halo. The more you figure in their minds, the more they will envelop you in seductive fantasies.“
38
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“To compensate for the difficulties in their lives, people spend a lot of their time daydreaming, imagining a future full of adventure, success, and romance. If you can create the illusion that through you they can live out their dreams, you will have them at your mercy.”
39
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“Aim at secret wishes that have been thwarted or repressed, stirring up uncontrollable emotions, clouding their powers of reason. Lead the seduced to a point of confusion in which they can no longer tell the difference between illusion and reality.”
40
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“Lofty words of love and grand gestures can be suspicious: Why are you trying so hard to please? The details of a seduction? the subtle gestures, the offhand things you do? are often more charming and revealing.”
41
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“You must learn to distract your victims with a myriad of pleasant little rituals? thoughtful gifts tailored just for them, clothes and adornments designed to please them, gestures that show the time and attention you are paying them. Mesmerized by what they see, they will not notice what you are really up to.”
42
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“People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.” ...
43
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“Her seductive power, however, did not lie in her looks...”
44
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“When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.”
45
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“Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry... makes people compete for the attention.”
46
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“You may grow frustrated and depressed, never realizing that the source of it is your alienation from your own creative potential.”
47
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“Feeling motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.”
48
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“Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it.”
49
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“No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow. You will be assailed by varieties of hidden pain. Most often you deviate because of the lure of money, of more immediate prospects of prosperity.Because this does not comply with something deep within you, your interest will lag and eventually the money will not come so easily.”
50
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“We are entering a world in which we can rely less and less upon the state, the corporation, or family or friends to help and protect us. It is a globalized, harshly competitive environment. We must learn to develop ourselves.”
51
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“In order to master a field, you must love the subject and feel a profound connection to it. Your interest must transcend the field itself and border on the religious.”
52
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“You possess a kind of inner force that seeks to guide you toward your Life’s Task —what you are meant to accomplish in the time that you have to live.”
53
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“You are not tied to a particular position; your loyalty is not to a career or a company. You are committed to your Life’s Task, to giving it full expression. It is up to you to find it and guide it correctly. It is not up to others to protect or help you. You are on your own.”
54
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“You don’t want to abandon the skills and experience you have gained,but to find a new way to apply them. Your eye is on the future, not the past.Often such creative readjustments lead to a superior path for us—we are shaken out of our complacency and forced to reassess where we are headed.”
55
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“You cannot have everything in the present. The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts. The process of getting there, however, is full of challenges and pleasures.”
56
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“Practical knowledge is the ultimate commodity, and is what will pay you dividends for decades to come.”
57
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“Move toward challenges that will toughen and improve you.”
58
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“Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process.”
59
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“It is better to dedicate two or three hours of intense focus to a skill than to spend eight hours of diffused concentration on it. You want to be as immediately present to what you are doing as possible.”
60
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“What is important when you are young, is to train yourself to get by with little money and make the most of your youthful energy.”
61
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“It is a simple law of human psychology that your thoughts will tend to revolve around what you value most.”
62
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“You must value learning above everything else.”
63
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“No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you. If you desire an apprenticeship, if you want to learn and set yourself up for mastery, you have to do it yourself,and with great energy.”
64
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“It is never wise to purposefully do without the benefits of having a mentor in your life. You will waste valuable time in finding and shaping what you need to know. But sometimes you have no choice.”
65
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“The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery.”

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