• Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite—inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
• If you cannot help being charming and superior, you must learn to avoid such monsters of vanity. Either that, or find a way to mute your good qualities when in the company of a Cesare Borgia.
• Second, never imagine that because the master loves you, you can do anything you want.
• First you must flatter and puff up your master. Overt flattery can be effective but has its limits; it is too direct and obvious, and looks bad to other courtiers. Discreet flattery is much more powerful.
• If you are more intelligent than your master, for example, seem the opposite: Make him appear more intelligent than you. Act naive. Make it seem that you need his expertise. Commit harmless mistakes that will not hurt you in the long run but will give you the chance to ask for his help. Masters adore such requests.
Law 2 : NEVER PUT TOO MUCH TRUST IN FRIENDS, LEARN HOW TO USE ENEMIES
• While a friend expects more and more favors, and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expected nothing and got everything. A man suddenly spared the guillotine is a grateful man indeed, and will go to the ends of the earth for the man who has pardoned him. In time, these former enemies became Sung’s most trusted friends.
• The problem with using or hiring friends is that it will inevitably limit your power. The friend is rarely the one who is most able to help you; and in the end, skill and competence are far more important than friendly feelings.
• Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
• Never pick a fight with someone you are not sure you can defeat, as Mao knew the Japanese would be defeated in time. Second, if you have no apparent enemies, you must sometimes set up a convenient target, even turning a friend into an enemy.
Law 3 : CONCEAL YOUR INTENTIONS
• Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.
• Most people are open books. They say what they feel, blurt out their opinions at every opportunity, and constantly reveal their plans and intentions.
• Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals—just not your real ones. You will kill three birds with one stone: You appear friendly, open, and trusting; you conceal your intentions; and you send your rivals on time-consuming wild-goose chases.
Law 4 : ALWAYS SAY LESS THAN NECESSARY
• When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control.
• The less he said about his work, the more people talked about it. And the more they talked, the more valuable his work became.
Law 5 : SO MUCH DEPENDS ON REPUTATION—GUARD IT WITH YOUR LIFE
• A solid reputation increases your presence and exaggerates your strengths without your having to spend much energy.
• Perhaps you have already stained your reputation, so that you are prevented from establishing a new one. In such cases it is wise to associate with someone whose image counteracts your own, using their good name to whitewash and elevate yours.
• By not caring how you are perceived, you let others decide this for you. Be the master of your fate, and also of your reputation.
Law 6 : COURT ATTENTION AT ALL COST
• Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.
• To create a crowd you have to do something different and odd. At the beginning of your rise to the top, then, spend all your energy on attracting attention.
• He would even write anonymous attacks on his own work, just to keep his name in the papers.
• The worst fate in the world for a man who yearns fame, glory, and, of course, power is to be ignored.
• If you find yourself in a lowly position that offers little opportunity for you to draw attention, an effective trick is to attack the most visible, most famous, most powerful person you can find.
• Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do. Do not show all your cards.
• Do something that cannot be easily explained or interpreted. Choose a simple action, but carry it out in a way that unsettles your opponent, a way with many possible interpretations, making your intentions obscure.
• Never appear overly greedy for attention, then, for it signals insecurity, and insecurity drives power away.
Law 7 : GET OTHERS TO DO THE WORK FOR YOU, BUT ALWAYS TAKE THE CREDIT
• First, the credit for an invention or creation is as important, if not more important, than the invention itself. You must secure the credit for yourself and keep others from stealing it away, or from piggy-backing on your hard work. To accomplish this you must always be vigilant and ruthless, keeping your creation quiet until you can be sure there are no vultures circling overhead.
• Second, learn to take advantage of other people’s work to further your own cause. Time is precious and life is short. If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out.
• Find people with the skills and creativity you lack. Either hire them, while putting your own name on top of theirs, or find a way to take their work and make it your own.
Law 8 : MAKE OTHER PEOPLE COME TO YOU—USE BAIT IF NECESSARY
• For negotiations or meetings, it is always wise to lure others into your territory, or the territory of your choice. You have your bearings, while they see nothing familiar and are subtly placed on the defensive.
• If you have time on your side, and know that you and your enemies are at least at equal strength, then deplete their strength by making them come to you. If time is against you—your enemies are weaker, and waiting will only give them the chance to recover—give them no such chance. Strike quickly and they have nowhere to go.
Law 9 : WIN THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, NEVER THROUGH ARGUMENT
• Since each man believes that he is right, and words will rarely convince him otherwise, the arguer’s reasoning falls on deaf ears.
• Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas indirectly.
Law 10: INFECTION: AVOID THE UNHAPPY AND UNLUCKY
• You can die from someone else’s misery—emotional states are as infectious as diseases. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster.
• When you suspect you are in the presence of an infector, don’t argue, don’t try to help, don’t pass the person on to your friends, or you will become enmeshed. Flee the infector’s presence or suffer the consequences.
• Those misfortunates among us who have been brought down by circumstances beyond their control deserve all the help and sympathy we can give them. But there are others who are not born to misfortune or unhappiness, but who draw it upon themselves by their destructive actions and unsettling effect on others.
Law 11 : LEARN TO KEEP PEOPLE DEPENDENT ON YOU
• Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
• No one will come to depend on you if they are already strong. If you are ambitious, it is much wiser to seek out weak rulers or masters with whom you can create a relationship of dependency.
• The ultimate power is the power to get people to do as you wish. When you can do this without having to force people or hurt them, when they willingly grant you what you desire, then your power is untouchable.
• By knowing other people’s secrets, by holding information that they wouldn’t want broadcast, you seal your fate with theirs. You are untouchable.
Law 12 : USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM
• Learn to give before you take. It softens the ground, takes the bite out of a future request, or simply creates a distraction.
• We are all creatures of habit, and our first impressions last a long time. If someone believes you are honest at the start of your relationship it takes a lot to convince them otherwise. This gives you room to maneuver.
• Honesty is one of the best ways to disarm the wary, but it is not the only one. Any kind of noble, apparently selfless act will serve.
Law 13 : WHEN ASKING FOR HELP, APPEAL TO PEOPLE’S SELF-INTEREST, NEVER TO THEIR MERCY OR GRATITUDE
• When people choose between talk about the past and talk about the future, a pragmatic person will always opt for the future and forget the past.
• At each step on the way to acquiring power, you must train yourself to think your way inside the other person’s mind, to see their needs and interests, to get rid of the screen of your own feelings that obscure the truth. Master this art and there will be no limits to what you can accomplish.
• When they ooze greed, do not appeal to their charity. When they want to look charitable and noble, do not appeal to their greed.
Law 14 : POSE AS A FRIEND, WORK AS A SPY
• Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions.
• Such is the power of artful spying: It makes you seem all-powerful, clairvoyant. Your knowledge of your mark can also make you seem charming, so well can you anticipate his desires. No one sees the source of your power, and what they cannot see they cannot fight.
• During social gatherings and innocuous encounters, pay attention. This is when people’s guards are down. By suppressing your own personality, you can make them reveal things.
• By pretending to bare your heart to another person, in other words, you make them more likely to reveal their own secrets. Give them a false confession and they will give you a real one.
Law 15: CRUSH YOUR ENEMY TOTALLY
• Have no mercy. Crush your enemies as totally as they would crush you. Ultimately the only peace and security you can hope for from your enemies is their disappearance.
• Allow your enemies no options. Annihilate them and their territory is yours to carve. The goal of power is to control your enemies completely, to make them obey your will. You cannot afford to go halfway. If they have no options, they will be forced to do your bidding.
Law 16 : USE ABSENCE TO INCREASE RESPECT AND HONOR
• Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
• At the start of an affair, you need to heighten your presence in the eyes of the other. If you absent yourself too early, you may be forgotten. But once your lover’s emotions are engaged, and the feeling of love has crystallized, absence inflames and excites. Giving no reason for your absence excites even more: The other person assumes he or she is at fault. While you are away, the lover’s imagination takes flight, and a stimulated imagination cannot help but make love grow stronger.
• The need to withdraw only comes after you have established your presence; leave too early and you do not increase your respect, you are simply forgotten.
Law 17: KEEP OTHERS IN SUSPENDED TERROR: CULTIVATE AN AIR OF UNPREDICTABILITY
• Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves.
• When people cannot figure out what you are doing, they are kept in a state of terror—waiting, uncertain, confused.
• If you find yourself outnumbered or cornered, throw in a series of unpredictable moves. Your enemies will be so confused that they will pull back or make a tactical blunder.
• Scrambling your patterns on a day-to-day basis will cause a stir around you and stimulate interest. People will talk about you, ascribe motives and explanations that have nothing to do with the truth, but that keep you constantly in their minds.
• Unpredictability can work against you sometimes, especially if you are in a subordinate position. Too much unpredictability will be seen as a sign of indecisiveness, or even of some more serious psychic problem.
Law 18: DO NOT BUILD FORTRESSES TO PROTECT YOURSELF—ISOLATION IS DANGEROUS
• Retreat into a fortress and you lose contact with the sources of your power. You lose your ear for what is happening around you, as well as a sense of proportion.
• Because humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation. To make yourself powerful you must place yourself at the center of things, as Louis XIV did at Versailles. All activity should revolve around you, and you should be aware of everything happening on the street, and of anyone who might be hatching plots against you.
• If you need time to think, then, choose isolation only as a last resort, and only in small doses. Be careful to keep your way back into society open.
Law 19 : KNOW WHO YOU’RE DEALING WITH—DO NOT OFFEND THE WRONG PERSON
• But if you deal blindly with whomever crosses your path, you will have a life of constant sorrow, if you even live that long. Being able to recognize types of people, and to act accordingly, is critical.
• Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are.
• 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. Never reject them with an insult until you know them better; you may be dealing with a Genghis Khan.
• Test them first—make, say, a mild joke at their expense. A confident person will laugh; an overly insecure one will react as if personally insulted. If you suspect you are dealing with this type, find another victim.
• You can never be sure who you are dealing with. A man who is of little importance and means today can be a person of power tomorrow. We forget a lot in our lives, but we rarely forget an insult.
• First, in judging and measuring your opponent, never rely on your instincts. Nothing can substitute for gathering concrete knowledge.
• Second, never trust appearances. Anyone with a serpent’s heart can use a show of kindness to cloak it; a person who is blustery on the outside is often really a coward. Learn to see through appearances and their contradictions.
Law 20 : DO NOT COMMIT TO ANYONE
• It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself.
• If we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too. The moment you commit, the magic is gone.
• Put yourself in the middle between competing powers. Lure one side with the promise of your help; the other side, always wanting to outdo its enemy, will pursue you as well.
• People who rush to the support of others tend to gain little respect in the process, for their help is so easily obtained, while those who stand back find themselves besieged with supplicants.
• Do not let people drag you into their petty fights and squabbles. Seem interested and supportive, but find a way to remain neutral; let others do the fighting while you stand back, watch and wait.
• Slowness to pick up your weapons can be a weapon itself, especially if you let other people
exhaust themselves fighting, then take advantage of their exhaustion.
Law 21: PLAY A SUCKER TO CATCH A SUCKER—SEEM DUMBER THAN YOUR MARK
• 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.
• The feeling that someone else is more intelligent than we are is almost intolerable. We usually try to justify it in different ways: “He only has book knowledge, whereas I have real knowledge.” “Her parents paid for her to get a good education. If my parents had had as much money, if I had been as privileged....” “He’s not as smart as he thinks.” Last but not least: “She may know her narrow little field better than I do, but beyond that she’s really not smart at all. Even Einstein was a boob outside physics.”
• Appearing less intelligent than you are, even a bit of a fool, is the perfect disguise. Look like a harmless pig and no one will believe you harbor dangerous ambitions.
• If people inadvertently learn the truth—that you are actually much smarter than you look—they will admire you more for being discreet than for making your brilliance show. At the start of your climb to the top, of course, you cannot play too stupid: You may want to let your bosses know, in a subtle way, that you are smarter than the competition around you. As you climb the ladder, however, you should to some degree try to dampen your brilliance.
Law 22 : USE THE SURRENDER TACTIC: TRANSFORM WEAKNESS INTO POWER
• 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.
• When you are weaker, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. No one comes to help the weak—by doing so they would only put themselves in jeopardy.
Law 23: CONCENTRATE YOUR FORCES
• If you are not in danger,” says Sun-tzu, “do not fight.”
• Concentrate on a single goal, a single task, and beat it into submission. In the world of power you will constantly need help from other people, usually those more powerful than you.
• In cases when you may need protection, then, it is often wise to entwine yourself around several sources of power. The more patrons and masters you serve the less risk you run if one of them falls from power.
• Finally, power itself always exists in concentrated forms. In any organization it is inevitable for a small group to hold the strings. You must find out who controls the operations, who is the real director behind the scenes.
Law 24: PLAY THE PERFECT COURTIER
• Great courtiers are gracious and polite; their aggression is veiled and indirect. Masters of the word, they never say more than necessary, getting the most out of a compliment or hidden insult.
• The more you talk about your deeds the more suspicion you cause. You also stir up enough envy among your peers to induce treachery and backstabbing.
• Never seem to be working too hard. Your talent must appear to flow naturally, with an ease that makes people take you for a genius rather than a workaholic. Even when something demands a lot of sweat, make it look effortless—people prefer to not see your blood and toil.
• You cannot display yourself too brazenly, yet you must also get yourself noticed. You stand no chance of rising if the ruler does not notice you in the swamp of courtiers.
• Bring only good news and your approach will gladden your master.
• Never Criticize Those Above You Directly. You must learn, however, to couch your advice and criticism as indirectly and as politely as possible.
• Nothing irritates a master more than having to reject someone’s request. It stirs up guilt and resentment. Ask for favors as rarely as possible, and know when to stop. Rather than making yourself the supplicant, it is always better to earn your favors, so that the ruler bestows them willingly. Most important: Do not ask for favors on another person’s behalf, least of all a friend’s.
• The ability to express wonder and amazement, and seem like you mean it, is a rare and dying talent, but one still greatly valued.
• If you prefer to not play the game and to always be honest and upfront, do not complain when others call you obnoxious and arrogant.
• Never be so self-absorbed as to believe that the master is interested in your criticisms of him, no matter how accurate they are.
• Never imagine that skill and talent are all that matter. In court the courtier’s art is more important than his talent; never spend so much time on your studies that you neglect your social skills. And the greatest skill of all is the ability to make the master look more talented than those around him.
• Do not overstep your bounds. Do what you are assigned to do, to the best of your abilities, and never do more. To think that by doing more you are doing better is a common blunder.
• Yet it is a mistake to imagine that the master is the only one to determine your fate. Your equals and subordinates play integral parts also.
Law 25 : RE-CREATE YOURSELF
• 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 it for you.
• Caesar set the ideal for all leaders and people of power. Like him, you must learn to enlarge your actions through dramatic techniques such as surprise, suspense, the creation of sympathy, and symbolic identification. Also like him, you must be constantly aware of your audience—of what will please them and what will bore them. You must arrange to place yourself at the center, to command attention, and never to be upstaged at any cost.
• The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed. Your power is limited to the tiny amount allotted to the role you have selected or have been forced to assume. An actor, on the other hand, plays many roles.
• Never revealing all your cards at once, but unfolding them in a way that heightens their dramatic effect.
Law 26: KEEP YOUR HANDS CLEAN
• You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
• If the scapegoat appears too weak and his punishment too cruel, you may end up the victim of your own device.
• Look for a powerful third party who shares an enemy with you (if for different reasons), then take advantage of their superior power to deal blows which would have cost you much more energy, since you are weaker.
• Actually, though, they have the opposite effect: They imply weakness. Why are you working so hard? Perhaps you are incompetent, and have to put in extra effort just to keep up; perhaps you are one of those people who does not know how to delegate, and has to meddle in everything. The truly powerful, on the other hand, seem never to be in a hurry or overburdened.
Law 27 : PLAY ON PEOPLE’S NEED TO BELIEVE TO CREATE A CULTLIKE FOLLOWING
• Step 1: Keep It Vague; Keep It Simple. To create a cult you must first attract attention. This you should do not through actions, which are too clear and readable, but through words, which are hazy and deceptive. Your initial speeches, conversations, and interviews must include two elements: on the one hand the promise of something great and transformative, and on the other a total vagueness.
Law 28 : ENTER ACTION WITH BOLDNESS
• If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness.
• The bold move makes you seem larger and more powerful than you are. If it comes suddenly, with the stealth and swiftness of a snake, it inspires that much more fear.
• If you enter an action with less than total confidence, you set up obstacles in your own path.
• When you are as small and obscure as David was, you must find a Goliath to attack. The larger the target, the more attention you gain. The bolder the attack, the more you stand out from the crowd, and the more admiration you earn.
• And so we admire the bold, and prefer to be around them, because their self-confidence infects us and draws us outside our own realm of inwardness and reflection.
• The best place to begin is often the delicate world of negotiation, particularly those discussions in which you are asked to set your own price. How often we put ourselves down by asking for too little.
Law 29 : PLAN ALL THE WAY TO THE END
• The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others.
• It is a cliché among strategists that your plan must include alternatives and have a degree of flexibility.
Law 30 : MAKE YOUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS SEEM EFFORTLESS
• Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed.
• Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work—it only raises questions.
• As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else.
• When you reveal the inner workings of your creation, you become just one more mortal among others. Avoid the temptation of showing how clever you are—it is far more clever to conceal the mechanisms of your cleverness.
• The more mystery surrounds your actions, the more awesome your power seems.
Law 31 : CONTROL THE OPTIONS: GET OTHERS TO PLAY WITH THE CARDS YOU DEAL
• The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose.
• Kissinger would propose three or four choices of action for each situation, and would present them in such a way that the one he preferred always seemed the best solution compared to the others.
Law 32 : PLAY TO PEOPLE’S FANTASIES
• The person who can spin a fantasy out of an oppressive reality has access to untold power.
• Never be distracted by people’s glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.
• Promise a great and total change—from poor to rich, sickness to health, misery to ecstasy—and you will have followers.
Law 33 : DISCOVER EACH MAN’S THUMBSCREW
• Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure.
• Everyday conversation supplies the richest mine of weaknesses, so train yourself to listen. Start by always seeming interested—the appearance of a sympathetic ear will spur anyone to talk. A clever trick, often used by the nineteenth-century French statesman Talleyrand, is to appear to open up to the other person, to share a secret with them. It can be completely made up, or it can be real but of no great importance to you—the important thing is that it should seem to come from the heart.
• When entering the court, find the weak link. The person in control is often not the king or queen; it is someone behind the scenes—the favorite, the husband or wife, even the court fool.
Law 34 : BE ROYAL IN YOUR OWN FASHION: ACT LIKE A KING TO BE TREATED LIKE ONE
• The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.
• It is within your power to set your own price. How you carry yourself reflects what you think of yourself. If you ask for little, shuffle your feet and lower your head, people will assume this reflects your character. But this behavior is not you—it is only how you have chosen to present yourself to other people. You can just as easily present the Columbus front: buoyancy, confidence, and the feeling that you were born to wear a crown.
• We start to bow and scrape and apologize for even the simplest of requests. The solution to such a shrinking of horizons is to deliberately force ourselves in the opposite direction—to downplay the failures and ignore the limitations, to make ourselves demand and expect as much as the child.
• If we believe we are destined for great things, our belief will radiate outward, just as a crown creates an aura around a king. This outward radiance will infect the people around us, who will think we must have reasons to feel so confident.
• First, the Columbus Strategy: Always make a bold demand. Set your price high and do not waver. Second, in a dignified way, go after the highest person in the building. This immediately puts you on the same plane as the chief executive you are attacking. It is the David and Goliath Strategy: By choosing a great opponent, you create the appearance of greatness. Third, give a gift of some sort to those above you.
• Never make the mistake of thinking that you elevate yourself by humiliating people.
Law 35 : MASTER THE ART OF TIMING
• Never seem to be in a hurry-hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself, and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually.
• When the times were against Fouché, he did not struggle, get emotional, or strike out rashly. He kept his cool and maintained a low profile. Whenever he found himself in the weaker position, he played for time, which he knew would always be his ally if he was patient.
• When you force the pace out of fear and impatience, you create a nest of problems that require fixing, and you end up taking much longer than if you had taken your time.
• Patience is worthless unless combined with a willingness to fall ruthlessly on your opponent at the right moment.
Law 36 : DISDAIN THINGS YOU CANNOT HAVE: IGNORING THEM IS THE BEST REVENGE
• If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.
• Remember: 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.
• If you succeed in crushing the irritant, or even if you merely wound it, you create sympathy for the weaker side.
• If there is something you want but that you realize you cannot have, the worst thing you can do is draw attention to your disappointment by complaining about it. An infinitely more powerful tactic is to act as if it never really interested you in the first place.
• Second, when you are attacked by an inferior, deflect people’s attention by making it clear that the attack has not even registered.
• Often, then, while you show contempt publicly you will also need to keep an eye on the problem privately, monitoring its status and making sure it goes away. Do not let it become a cancerous cell.
Law 37 : CREATE COMPELLING SPECTACLES
• Words put you on the defensive. If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question. The image, on the other hand, imposes itself as a given.
• Use the power of symbols as a way to rally, animate, and unite your troops or team.
Law 38 : THINK AS YOU LIKE BUT BEHAVE LIKE OTHERS
• Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.
• There is no point in making a display of your dangerous ideas if they only bring you suffering and persecution. Martyrdom serves no purpose—better to live on in an oppressive world, even to thrive in it. Meanwhile find a way to express your ideas subtly for those who understand you.
• The reason arguments do not work is that most people hold their ideas and values without thinking about them.
• Wise and clever people learn early on that they can display conventional behavior and mouth conventional ideas without having to believe in them.
• When you go into society, leave behind your own ideas and values, and put on the mask that is most appropriate for the group in which you find yourself.
Law 39 : STIR UP WATERS TO CATCH FISH
• Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective.
• To show your frustration is to show that you have lost your power to shape events; it is the helpless action of the child who resorts to a hysterical fit to get his way.
• When the waters are still, your opponents have the time and space to plot actions that they will initiate and control. So stir the waters, force the fish to the surface, get them to act before they are ready, steal the initiative.
• Once you train yourself not to take matters personally, and to control your emotional responses, you will have placed yourself in a position of tremendous power.
• If there is no gap—if they are impossibly strong—you have nothing to gain and everything to lose by provoking them. Choose carefully whom you bait, and never stir up the sharks.
• And use your thunder-bolts rarely, to make them the more intimidating and meaningful. Whether purposefully staged or not, if your outbursts come too often, they will lose their power.
Law 40 : DESPISE THE FREE LUNCH
• What is offered for free is dangerous-it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for.
• By strategically spreading your wealth, you charm the other courtiers, creating pleasure and making valuable allies.
• The powerful must have grandeur of spirit—they can never reveal any pettiness.
• To give a gift is to imply that you and the recipient are equals at the very least, or that you are the recipient’s superior.
• Bait your deceptions with the possibility of easy money. People are essentially lazy, and want wealth to fall in their lap rather than to work for it.
Law 41 : AVOID STEPPING INTO A GREAT MAN’S SHOES
• What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them.
• The father most often manages to amass his fortune, his kingdom, because he begins with little or nothing.
• When a man like this has a son, he becomes domineering and oppressive, imposing his lessons on the son, who is starting off life in circumstances totally different from those in which the father himself began.
• Only the weak rest on their laurels and dote on past triumphs; in the game of power there is never time to rest.
• The superstitious belief that if the person before you succeeded by doing A, B, and C, you can re-create their success by doing the same thing.
• Plenitude and prosperity tend to make us lazy and inactive: When our power is secure we have no need to act. This is a serious danger, especially for those who achieve success and power at an early age.
• You must be prepared to return to square one psychologically rather than growing fat and lazy with prosperity.
Law 42 : STRIKE THE SHEPHERD AND THE SHEEP WILL SCATTER
• Within any group, trouble can most often be traced to a single source, the unhappy, chronically dissatisfied one who will always stir up dissension and infect the group with his or her ill ease.
• Find the one head that matters—the person with willpower, or smarts, or, most important of all, charisma. Whatever it costs you, lure this person away, for once he is absent his powers will lose their effect.
• In every group, power is concentrated in the hands of one or two people, for this is one area in which human nature will never change: People will congregate around a single strong personality like planets orbiting a sun.
• First, your absence from the court spells danger for you, and you should never leave the scene in a time of turmoil, for your absence can both symbolize and induce a loss of power; second, and on the other hand, luring your enemies away from the court at critical moments is a great ploy.
Law 43 : WORK ON THE HEARTS AND MINDS OF OTHERS
• At all times you must attend to those around you, gauging their particular psychology, tailoring your words to what you know will entice and seduce them.
• The higher your station, the greater the need to remain attuned to the hearts and minds of those below you, creating a base of support to maintain you at the pinnacle.
• The men who have changed the universe have never gotten there by working on leaders, but rather by moving the masses.
• Push people to despair, then give them relief. If they expect pain and you give them pleasure, you win their hearts.
• To find the key that will motivate them, first get them to open up. The more they talk, the more they reveal about their likes and dislikes—the handles and levers to move them with.
Law 44 : DISARM AND INFURIATE WITH THE MIRROR EFFECT
• Do what your enemies do, following their actions as best you can, and they cannot see what you are up to—they are blinded by your mirror.
• This is the power of mirroring those around you. First, you give people the feeling that you share their thoughts and goals. Second, if they suspect you have ulterior motives, the mirror shields you from them, preventing them from figuring out your strategy.
• In every encounter with others, he would sense their moods and tastes, then carefully tailor his words and actions to mirror their inmost desires.
Law 45 : PREACH THE NEED FOR CHANGE, BUT NEVER REFORM TOO MUCH AT ONCE
• If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
• The man who initiates strong reforms often becomes the scapegoat for any kind of dissatisfaction.
Law 46: NEVER APPEAR TOO PERFECT
• 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 a minority can succeed at the game of life, and that minority inevitably arouses the envy of those around them. Once success happens your way, however, the people to fear the most are those in your own circle, the friends and acquaintances you have left behind.
• Make alliances with those below you, and elevate them to positions of power to secure their support in times of need. Never flaunt your wealth, and carefully conceal the degree to which it has bought influence.
• Never be so foolish as to believe that you are stirring up admiration by flaunting the qualities that raise you above others.
• First, accept the fact that there will be people who will surpass you in some way, and also the fact that you may envy them. But make that feeling a way of pushing yourself to equal or surpass them someday.
• Second, understand that as you gain power, those below you will feel envious of you. They may not show it but it is inevitable. Do not naively accept the facade they show you—read between the lines of their criticisms, their little sarcastic remarks, the signs of backstabbing, the excessive praise that is preparing you for a fall, the resentful look in the eye.
• The wisest policy of the powerful is to create a kind of pity for themselves, as if their responsibilities were a burden and a sacrifice.
• Excessive praise is an almost sure sign that the person praising you envies you; they are either setting you up for a fall—it will be impossible for you to live up to their praise—or they are sharpening their blades behind your back. At the same time, those who are hypercritical of you, or who slander you publicly, probably envy you as well.
• Do not try to help or do favors for those who envy you; they will think you are condescending to them.
Law 47 : DO NOT GO PAST THE MARK YOU AIMED FOR; IN VICTORY, LEARN WHEN TO STOP
• Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.
• Success plays strange tricks on the mind. It makes you feel invulnerable, while also making you more hostile and emotional when people challenge your power.
• Another moment when a small success can spoil the chances for a larger one may come if a master or superior grants you a favor: It is a dangerous mistake to ask for more.
• Your caution after victory should never make you hesitate, or lose momentum, but rather act as a safeguard against rash action.
Law 48 : ASSUME FORMLESSNESS
• People weighed down by a system and inflexible ways of doing things cannot move fast, cannot sense or adapt to change Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten.
• Never show any defensiveness. When you act defensive, you show your emotions, revealing a clear form. Your opponents will realize they have hit a nerve, an Achilles’ heel.
• And they will hit it again and again. So train yourself to take nothing personally. Never let anyone get your back up.
• Let no one know what gets to you, or where your weaknesses lie.
• Finally, learning to adapt to each new circumstance means seeing events through your own eyes, and often ignoring the advice that people constantly peddle your way.
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