The 48 Laws of Power

by Robert Greene

To have ultimate victory, you must be ruthless. NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, 1769-1821

Those who seek to achieve things should show no mercy. Kautilya, Indian philosopher third century B.C. OBSERVANCE OF THE

The wisdom behind “crushing the enemy” is as ancient as the Bible: Its first practitioner may have been Moses, who learned it from God Himself, when He parted the Red Sea for the Jews, then let the water flow back over the pursuing Egyptians so that “not so much as one of them remained.” When Moses returned from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments and found his people worshipping the Golden Calf, he had every last offender slaughtered. And just before he died, he told his followers, finally about to enter the Promised Land, that when they had defeated the tribes of Canaan they should “utterly destroy them... make no covenant with them, and show no mercy to them.”

LAW 16 USE ABSENCE TO INCREASE RESPECT AND HONOR JUDGMENT

made a terrible mistake. Over the next year, unable to see his lady, he experienced the absence, the terrible absence, that can only inflame love. He wrote one of his most beautiful poems, “My song ascends for mercy praying.” And he sent many letters to Guillelma, explaining what he had done, and begging forgiveness.

Everything in the world depends on absence and presence. A strong presence will draw power and attention to you—you shine more brightly than those around

“Love never dies of starvation,” she wrote, “but often of indigestion.”

Napoleon was recognizing the law of absence and presence when he said, “If I am often seen at the theater, people will cease to notice me.” Today, in a world

LAW 17 KEEP OTHERS IN SUSPENDED TERROR: CULTIVATE AN AIR OF UNPREDICTABILITY

Spassky tried to be patient. His Russian bosses felt that Fischer was humiliating him and told him to walk away, but Spassky wanted this match. He knew he could destroy Fischer, and nothing was going to spoil the greatest victory of his career. “So it seems that all our work may come to nothing,” Spassky told a comrade. “But what can we do? It is Bobby’s move. If he comes, we play. If he does not come, we do not play. A man who is willing to commit suicide has the initiative.”

At 5:09 Fischer showed up, exactly one minute before the match was to be canceled. The first game

again when facing numerically superior forces. “Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible,” he said, “... such tactics will win every time and a small army may thus destroy a large one.”

Pablo Picasso once remarked, “The best calculation is the absence of calculation. Once you have attained a certain level of recognition, others generally figure that when you do something, it’s for an intelligent reason. So it’s really foolish to plot out your movements too carefully in advance. You’re better off acting capriciously.”

you appear, the more respect you will garner. Only the terminally subordinate act in a predictable manner.

Authority: The enlightened ruler is so mysterious that he seems to dwell nowhere, so inexplicable that no one can seek him. He reposes in nonaction above, and his ministers tremble below. (Han-fei-tzu, Chinese philosopher, third century B.C.)

LAW 18 DO NOT BUILD FORTRESSES TO PROTECT YOURSELF—ISOLATION IS DANGEROUS

constant human contact cannot facilitate is thought. The weight of society’s pressure to conform, and the lack of distance from other people, can make it impossible to think clearly about what is

LAW 19 KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH—DO NOT OFFEND THE WRONG PERSON JUDGMENT

When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet. FROM A CH’AN BUDDHIST CLASSIC, QUOTED IN THUNDER IN THE SKY, TRANSLATED BY THOMAS CLEARY, 1993

After five years of hunting, Norfleet had single-handedly destroyed the country’s largest confederation of con artists. The effort bankrupted him and ruined his marriage, but he died a satisfied man.

Authority: Be convinced, that there are no persons so insignificant and inconsiderable, but may, some time or other, have it in their power to be of use to you; which they certainly will not, if you have once shown them contempt. Wrongs are often forgiven, but contempt never is. Our pride remembers it for ever. (Lord Chesterfield, 1694-1773)

LAW 20 DO NOT COMMIT TO ANYONE JUDGMENT It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others—playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married. Queen Elizabeth I, 1533-1603 KEYS TO POWER

The tactic has a parallel in seduction: When you want to seduce a woman, Stendhal advises, court her sister first.

PART II: DO NOT COMMIT TO ANYONE-STAY ABOVE THE FRAY

Men of great abilities are slow to act. for it is easier to avoid occasions for committing yourself than to come well out of a commitment. Such occasions test your judgment; it is safer to avoid them than to emerge victorious from them. One obligation leads to a greater one, and you come very near to the brink of disaster. BALTASAR GRACIÁN, 1601-1658

THE EAGLE AND THE SOW An eagle built a nest on a tree, and hatched out some eaglets. And a wild sow brought her litter under the tree. The eagle used to fly off after her prey, and bring it back to her young. And the sow rooted around the tree and hunted in the woods, and when night came she would bring her young something to eat. And the eagle and the sow lived in neighborly fashion. And a grimalkin laid her plans to destroy the eaglets and the little sucking pigs. She went to the eagle, and said: “Eagle, you had better not fly very far away. Beware of the sow; she is planning an evil design. She is going to undermine the roots of the tree. You see she is rooting all the time.” Then the grimalkin went to the sow and said: “Sow, you have not a good neighbor. Last evening I heard the eagle saying to her eaglets: ‘My dear little eaglets, I am going to treat you to a nice little pig. Just as soon as the sow is gone, I will bring you a little young sucking pig.”’ From that time the eagle ceased to fly out after prey, and the sow did not go any more into the forest. The eaglets and the young pigs perished of starvation, and grimalkin feasted on them. FABLES, LEO TOLSTOY, 1828-1910

When the snipe and the mussel struggle, the fisherman gets the benefit. Ancient Chinese saying KEYS TO POWER

Authority: Regard it as more courageous not to become involved in an engagement than to win in battle, and where there is already one interfering fool, take care that there shall not be two. (Baltasar Gracián, 1601-1658)

LAW 21 PLAY A SUCKER TO CATCH A SUCKER—SEEM DUMBER THAN YOUR MARK JUDGMENT No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart—and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.

Now, there is nothing of which a man is prouder than of interlecutal ability, for it is this that gives him his commanding place in the animal world. It is an exceedingly rash thing to ter anyone see that you are decidedly superior to him in this respect, and to let other people see it too.... hence, white rank and riches may always reckon upon deferential treatment in society, that is something which intellectual ability can never expect To be ignorea is the greatest favour shown to it; and if people notice it at all, it is because they regard it us a piece of imperinence, or else as something to which its possessor has no legitimate right, and upon which he dares to pride himself; and in retaliation and revenge for his conduct, people secretly try and humiliare him in some other way; unit if they wait to ao this, it is only for a futing opporunity. A man may be as humble as possible in his demeanour and yet hardly ever get people to overlook his crime in standing intellectually above them. In the Garden of Roses, Sadi makes the remark: “You should know that foolish people are a hundredfold more averse to meeting the wise than the wise are indisposed for the company of the foolish.” On the other hand, it is a real recommendation to be stupid. For just as warmth is agreeable to the body, so it does the mind good to feel its superiority; and a man will seek company likely to give him this feeling, as instinctively as he will approach the fireplace or walk in the sun if he w...

Arnold and Slack pulled off their stupendous con not by using a fake engineer or bribing Tiffany: All of the experts had been real. All of them honestly believed in the existence of the mine and in the value of the gems. What had fooled them all was nothing else than Arnold and Slack themselves. The two men seemed to be such rubes, such hayseeds, so naive, that no one for an instant had believed them capable of an audacious scam. The prospectors had simply observed the law of appearing more stupid than the mark—the deceiver’s First Commandment.

document!” The Chinese have a phrase, “Masquerading as a swine to kill the tiger.” This refers to an ancient hunting technique in which the hunter clothes himself in the hide and snout of a pig, and mimics its grunting. The mighty tiger thinks a pig is coming his way, and lets it get close, savoring the prospect of an easy meal. But it is the hunter who has the last laugh.

LAW 22 USE THE SURRENDER TACTIC: TRANSFORM WEAKNESS INTO POWER

JUDGMENT When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you—surrender first. By turning the other cheek you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

Voltaire was living in exile in London at a time when anti-French sentiment was at its highest. One day walking through the streets. he found himself surrounded by an angry crowd. “Hang him. Hang the Frenchman,”they yelled. Voltaire calmly addressed the mob with the following words: “Men of England’ You wish to kill me because I am a Frenchman. Am I not punished enough in not being born an Englishman?” The crowd cheered his thoughtful words, and escorted him safely back to his lodgings. THE LITTLE, BROWN BOOK OF ANECDOTES. CLIFTON FADIMAN, ED., 1985

Weak people never give way when they ought to. Cardinal de Retz, 1613-1679

its authority with his pseudo-obedience. Keep in mind the following: People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic. Your outward sign of submission makes them feel important; satisfied that you respect them, they become easier targets for a later counterattack, or for the kind of indirect ridicule used by Brecht. Measuring your power over time, never sacrifice long-term maneuverability for the short-lived glories of martyrdom. When the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply and silently farts. Ethiophan proverb

But the next time someone pushes you and you find yourself starting to react, try this: Do not resist or fight back, but yield, turn the other cheek, bend. You will find that this often neutralizes their behavior—they expected, even wanted you to react with force and so they are caught off-guard and confounded by your lack of resistance. By yielding, you in fact control the situation, because your surrender is part of a larger plan to lull them into believing they have defeated you.

You have to remember that you only appear to surrender, like the animal that plays dead to save its hide. We have seen that it can be better to surrender than to fight; faced with a more powerful opponent and a sure defeat, it is often also better to surrender than to run away. Running away may save you for the time being, but the aggressor will eventually catch up with you. If you surrender instead, you have an opportunity to coil around your enemy and strike with your fangs from close up.

One minister, Hotta Masayoshi, wrote a memorandum in 1857 that influenced Japanese policy for years to come: “I am therefore convinced that our policy should be to conclude friendly alliances, to send ships to foreign countries everywhere and conduct trade, to copy the foreigners where they are at their best and so repair our own shortcomings, to foster our national strength and complete our armaments, and so gradually subject the foreigners to our influence until in the end all the countries of the world know the blessings of perfect tranquillity and our hegemony is acknowledged throughout the globe.” This is a brilliant application of the Law: Use surrender to gain access to your enemy. Learn his ways, insinuate yourself with him slowly, outwardly conform to his customs, but inwardly maintain your own culture.

If you run away or fight back, in the long run you cannot win. If you surrender, you will almost always emerge victorious. Image: An Oak Tree. The oak that resists the wind loses its branches one by one, and with nothing left to protect it, the trunk fi- nally snaps. The oak that bends lives long- er, its trunk grow- ing wider, its roots deeper and more tenacious.

Authority: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let them have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. (Jesus Christ, in Matthew 5:38-41)

J man

LAW 23 CONCENTRATE YOUR FORCES JUDGMENT

losing sight of distant dangers for the sake of present gain. “If you are not in danger,” says Sun-tzu, “do not fight.” It is almost a physical law: What is bloated beyond its proportions inevitably collapses.

Beware of dissipating your powers: strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent of every ill-judged outlay. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832

The best strategy is always to be very strong first in general, then at the decisive point.... There is no higher and simpler law of strategy than that of keeping one’s forces concentrated.... In short the first principle is: act with the utmost concentration. On War, Carl von Clausewitz, 1780-1831

The solution is a form of retreat inside ourselves, to the past, to more concentrated forms of thought and action. As Schopenhauer wrote, “Intellect is a magnitude of intensity, not a magnitude of extensity.” Napoleon knew the value of concentrating your forces at the enemy’s weakest spot— it was the secret of his success on the battlefield. But his willpower and his mind were equally modeled on this notion. Single-mindedness of purpose, total concentration on the goal, and the use of these qualities against people less focused, people in a state of distraction—such an arrow will find its mark every time and overwhelm the enemy.

Casanova attributed his success in life to his ability to concentrate on a single goal and push at it until it yielded. It was his ability to give himself over completely to the women he desired that made him so intensely seductive. For the weeks or months that one of these women lived in his orbit, he thought of no one else. When he was imprisoned in the treacherous “leads” of the doge’s palace in Venice, a prison from which no one had ever escaped, he concentrated his mind on the single goal of escape, day after day. A change of cells, which meant that months of digging had all been for naught, did not discourage him; he persisted and eventually escaped. “I have always believed,” he later wrote, “that when a man gets it into his head to do something, and when he exclusively occupies himself in that design, he must succeed, whatever the difficulties. That man will become Grand Vizier or Pope.”

LAW 24 PLAY THE PERFECT COURTIER JUDGMENT The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.