The 33 Strategies Of War (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1)

by Robert Greene

As Sun-tzu says, “Being unconquerable lies with yourself.”

Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared. Victory over your enemies will bring you a more lasting popularity.

Don’t depend on the enemy not coming; depend rather on being ready for him. —Sun-tzu, The Art of War (fourth century B.C.)

(A friend knows best how to hurt you.)

It might be supposed that the peaceful coast people would be found to be superior in moral qualities to their more warlike neighbors, but the contrary is the case. In almost all respects the advantage lies with the warlike tribes. Their houses are better built, larger, and cleaner; their domestic morality is superior; they are physically stronger, are braver, and physically and mentally more active and in general are more trustworthy. But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs and their loyalty to their community are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him.

Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.

Being attacked is a sign that you are important enough to be a target. You should relish the attention and the chance to prove yourself.

What limits individuals as well as nations is the inability to confront reality, to see things for what they are. As we grow older, we become more rooted in the past. Habit takes over. Something that has worked for us before becomes a doctrine, a shell to protect us from reality. Repetition replaces creativity.

It is a disease to be obsessed by the thought of winning. It is also a disease to be obsessed by the thought of employing your swordsmanship. So it is to be obsessed by the thought of using everything you have learned, and to be obsessed by the thought of attacking. It is also a disease to be obsessed and stuck with the thought of ridding yourself of any of these diseases. A disease here is an obsessed mind that dwells on one thing. Because all these diseases are in your mind, you must get rid of them to put your mind in order. TAKUAN, JAPAN, 1573–1645

if only we had known more, if only we had thought it through more thoroughly. That is precisely the wrong approach. What makes us go astray in the first place is that we are unattuned to the present moment, insensitive to the circumstances. We are listening to our own thoughts, reacting to things that happened in the past, applying theories and ideas that we digested long ago but that have nothing to do with our predicament in the present. More books, theories, and thinking only make the problem worse. My policy is to have no policy. ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809–1865

The great philosopher of war Carl von Clausewitz called this “friction”: the difference between our plans and what actually happens. Since friction is inevitable, our minds have to be capable of keeping up with change and adapting to the unexpected. The better we can adapt our thoughts to changing circumstances, the more realistic our responses to them will be. The more we lose ourselves in predigested theories and past experiences, the more inappropriate and delusional our response.

education is easier than reeducation.”

faced with a new situation, it is often best to imagine that you know nothing and that you need to start learning all over again.

For the love of God, pull yourself together and do not look at things so darkly: the first step backward makes a poor impression in the army, the second step is dangerous, and the third becomes fatal. —Frederick the Great (1712–86), letter to a general

What best equips you to cope with the heat of battle is neither more knowledge nor more intellect. What makes your mind stronger, and more able to control your emotions, is internal discipline and toughness. No one can teach you this skill; you cannot learn it by reading about it.

Authority: A great part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before. —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82)

Sometimes you need to run your ships aground, burn them, and leave yourself just one option: succeed or go down. Make the burning of your ships as real as possible—get rid of your safety net. Sometimes you have to become a little desperate to get anywhere. The ancient commanders of armies, who well knew the powerful influence of necessity, and how it inspired the soldiers with the most desperate courage, neglected nothing to subject their men to such a pressure. — Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527)

Common sense will not accomplish great things. Simply become insane and desperate.” HAGAKURE: THE BOOK OF THE SAMURAI, YAMAMOTO TSUNETOMO, 1659–1720

Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769–1821

When danger is greatest.—It is rare to break one’s leg when in the course of life one is toiling upwards— it happens much more often when one starts to take things easy and to choose the easy paths. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE, 1844–1900

“Sometimes death only comes from a lack of energy,” Napoleon once said, and lack of energy comes from a lack of challenges, comes when we have taken on less than we are capable of. Take a risk and your body and mind will respond with a rush of energy. Make risk a constant practice; never let yourself settle down.

An officer might go home chuckling about finding Marshall fussing over a gardening bill, but it would slowly dawn on him that if he wasted a penny, his boss would know.

See earlier the story where after he signed the 100million dollar cheque for the atom bomb he said he just finished writing one for 3.52 dollars for grass seed for his lawn

Authority: Better one bad general than two good ones. —Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

Patton’s philosophy of command was: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” PATTON: A GENIUS FOR WAR, CARLO D’ESTE, 1995

Separate to live, unite to fight. —Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

Sun-tzu expressed this idea differently: what you aim for in strategy, he said, is shih, a position of potential force—the position of a boulder perched precariously on a hilltop, say, or of a bowstring stretched taut. A tap on the boulder, the release of the bowstring, and potential force is violently unleashed. The boulder or arrow can go in any direction; it is geared to the actions of the enemy.

In a boxing sense being ready to throw any combination at any moment

“His Majesty made you a major because he believed you would know when not to obey his orders.”

expertise and impressive résumés matter less than character and the capacity for sacrifice.

Interpretation Lyndon Johnson was an intensely ambitious young man. He had neither money nor connections but had something more valuable: an understanding of human psychology. To command influence in the world, you need a power base, and here human beings—a devoted army of followers—are more valuable than money. They will do things for you that money cannot buy.

He whom the ancients called an expert in battle gained victory where victory was easily gained. Thus the battle of the expert is never an exceptional victory, nor does it win him reputation for wisdom or credit for courage. His victories in battle are unerring. Unerring means that he acts where victory is certain, and conquers an enemy that has already lost. THE ART OF WAR, SUN-TZU, FOURTH CENTURY B.C.

However desperate the situation and circumstances, don’t despair. When there is everything to fear, be unafraid. When surrounded by dangers, fear none of them. When without resources, depend on resourcefulness. When surprised, take the enemy itself by surprise. —Sun-tzu, The Art of War (fourth century B.C.)

Authority: To remain disciplined and calm while waiting for disorder to appear amongst the enemy is the art of self-possession. —Sun-tzu (fourth century B.C.)

War is the continuation of politics by other means. —Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831)

A journey of a thousand kilometers begins beneath one’s feet.

THE WILD BOAR AND THE FOX A wild boar was sharpening his tusks on a tree trunk one day. A fox asked him why he did this when there was neither huntsman nor danger threatening him. “I do so for a good reason,” he replied. “For if I am suddenly surprised by danger I wouldn’t have the time to sharpen my tusks. But now I will find them ready to do their duty.” The fable shows that it is no good waiting until danger comes to be ready. FABLES, AESOP, SIXTH CENTURY B.C.

He who knows the enemy and himself Will never in a hundred battles be at risk. SUN-TZU, FOURTH CENTURY B.C.

War is such that the supreme consideration is speed. This is to take advantage of what is beyond the reach of the enemy, to go by way of routes where he least expects you, and to attack where he has made no preparations. SUN-TZU, FOURTH CENTURY B.C.

In short, I think like Frederick [the Great], one should always be the first to attack. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769–1821

It is not the same when a fighter moves because he wants to move, and another when he moves because he has to. JOE FRAZIER, 1944

As your army faces the enemy and the enemy appears powerful, try to attack the enemy in one particular spot. If you are successful in crumbling that one particular spot, leave that spot and attack the next, and so on and so forth, as if you were going down a winding road. —Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645)

So to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles is not the highest excellence; the highest excellence is to subdue the enemy’s army without fighting at all.

Aptitude for maneuver is the supreme skill in a general; it is the most useful and rarest of gifts by which genius is estimated. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769–1821

In battle, this ability to rapidly pass through the observation-orientation-decision-action loop (the Boyd cycle) gave the American pilots a slight time advantage. If one views a dogfight as a series of Boyd cycles, one sees that the Americans would repeatedly gain a time advantage each cycle, until the enemy’s actions become totally inappropriate to the changing situations. Hence, the American pilots were able to “out–Boyd cycle” the enemy, thus outmaneuvering him and finally shooting him down.

THE ART OF MANEUVER, ROBERT R. LEONHARD, 1991

The goal of maneuver is to give you easy victories, which you do by luring opponents into leaving their fortified positions of strength for unfamiliar terrain where they must fight off balance. Since your opponents’ strength is inseparable from their ability to think straight, your maneuvers must be designed to make them emotional and befuddled. If you are too direct in this maneuvering, you run the risk of revealing your game; you must be subtle, drawing opponents toward you with enigmatic behavior, slowly getting under their skin with provocative comments and actions, then suddenly stepping back. When you feel that their emotions are engaged, that their frustration and anger are mounting, you can speed up the tempo of your maneuvers. Properly set up, your opponents will leap onto the island and strand themselves, giving you the easy victory.

Authority: Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter…. Nearly all the battles which are regarded as masterpieces of the military art … have been battles of maneuver in which very often the enemy has found himself defeated by some novel expedient or device, some queer, swift, unexpected thrust or stratagem. In such battles the losses of the victors have been small. —Winston Churchill (1874–1965)

The great German general Erwin Rommel once made a distinction between a gamble and a risk. Both cases involve an action with only a chance of success, a chance that is heightened by acting with boldness. The difference is that with a risk, if you lose, you can recover: your reputation will suffer no long-term damage, your resources will not be depleted, and you can return to your original position with acceptable losses. With a gamble, on the other hand, defeat can lead to a slew of problems that are likely to spiral out of control. With a gamble there tend to be too many variables to complicate the picture down the road if things go wrong. The problem goes further: if you encounter difficulties in a gamble,

People are drawn into gambles by their emotions: they see only the glittering prospects if they win and ignore the ominous consequences if they lose. Taking risks is essential; gambling is foolhardy. It can be years before you recover from a gamble, if you recover at all.

Aut non tentaris, aut perfice (Either don’t attempt it, or carry it through to the end). OVID, 43 B.C.–A.D. 17

The great prizefighter Jack Dempsey was once asked, “When you are about to hit a man, do you aim for his chin or his nose?” “Neither,” Dempsey replied. “I aim for the back of his head.” QUOTED IN THE MIND OF WAR, GRANT T. HAMMOND, 2001