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

by Robert Greene

Authority: To conquer is nothing. One must profit from one’s success. —Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also. —Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.)

THE MIND OF WAR, GRANT T. HAMMOND, 2001

THE SECRETS OF DDAY, GILLES PERRAULT, 1965

The camouflage strategy can be applied to daily life in two ways. First, it is always good to be able to blend into the social landscape, to avoid calling attention to yourself unless you choose to do so. When you talk and act like everyone else, mimicking their belief systems, when you blend into the crowd, you make it impossible for people to read anything particular in your behavior. (Appearances are all that count here— dress and talk like a businessman and you must be a businessman.) That gives you great room to move and plot without being noticed. Like a grasshopper on a leaf, you cannot be picked from your context—an excellent defense in times of weakness. Second, if you are preparing an attack of some sort and begin by blending into the environment, showing no sign of activity, your attack will seem to come out of nowhere, doubling its power.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Purloined Letter”: hide something in the most obvious place, because that is where no one will look.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected. —Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.)

I have forced myself to contradict myself in order to avoid conforming to my own taste. MARCEL DUCHAMP, 1887–1968

by enticing him to chase her, giving tantalizing lures but offering him nothing solid to grasp—that Empress Josephine made him her slave.

Image: The Mosquito. Most animals present a front, back, and sides that can be attacked or threatened. Mosquitoes, though, give you nothing but an irritating whir in the ear, from all sides and angles. You cannot hit them, you cannot see them. Your flesh, meanwhile, affords them endless targets. Enough bites and you realize that the only solution is to stop fighting and move as far away as possible.

For example, one is not usually in a superior position if he must ask another person for something. Yet he can ask for it in such a way that he is implying, “This is, of course, what I deserve.” THE STRATEGIES OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, JAY HALEY, 1963

Never interfere with an enemy that is in the process of committing suicide. —Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

THE COMPLETE UPMANSHIP, STEPHEN POTTER 1950

STRATEGIES OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, JAY HALEY, 1963

Authority: We often give our rivals the means of our own destruction. —Aesop (sixth century B.C.)

All the conceptions born of impatience and aimed at obtaining speedy victory could only be gross errors…. It was necessary to accumulate thousands of small victories to turn them into a great success. GENERAL VO NGUYEN GIAP, 1911

SAMURAI ZEN: THE WARRIOR KOANS, TREVOR LEGGETT, 1985

A prince need trouble little about conspiracies when the people are well disposed, but when they are hostile and hold him in hatred, then he must fear everything and everybody. NICCOLÒ MACHIAVELLI, 1469–1527

RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY AND THE ART OF WAR, JAMES A. AHO, 1981

THE ROMAN WAY, EDITH HAMILTON, 1932

PSALMS, 55:12–15, 20–21

The idiom represents an archetype in world literature: a person with a smiling face and a cruel heart, dubbed a “smiling tiger” in Chinese folklore. THE WILES OF WAR, TRANSLATED BY SUN HAICHEN, 1991

For example, when a wife requires her husband to be home every night because she has anxiety attacks when she is left alone, he cannot acknowledge that she is controlling his behavior because she is not requiring him to be home—the anxiety is and her behavior is involuntary. Neither can he refuse to let her control his behavior for the same reason. STRATEGIES OF PSYCHOTHERAPY, JAY HALEY, 1963

HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, THUCYDIDES, CIRCA 460–CIRCA 399 B.C.

Victory is gained not by the number killed but by the number frightened. —Arab proverb

The basis of Mongol warfare was unadulterated terror. Massacre, rapine and torture were the price of defeat, whether enforced or negotiated…. The whole apparatus of terror was remorselessly applied to sap the victim’s will to resist, and in practical terms this policy of “frightfulness” certainly paid short-term dividends. Whole armies were known to dissolve into fear-ridden fragments at the news of the approach of the toumans…. Many enemies were paralysed … before a [Mongol] army crossed their frontiers. THE ART OF WARFARE ON LAND, DAVID CHANDLER, 1974

Authority: There is no fate worse than being continuously under guard, for it means you are always afraid.—Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.)