Robert Greene Quotes

News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite.

To me, no matter what we do, we all strive for that experience.

I find the training of the mind that Zen puts people through is by far to me, the most interesting, one of the most interesting disciplines.

If you love music and it requires hours of practice that can be boring, you can survive the boredom, you're not going to love it but you can survive the boredom because you're connected to something that excites you.

No moment is wasted if you pay attention and learn the lessons contained in every experience.

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

If you are interested in a form of science or interested in a particular kind of business or whatever - or if you want to be a writer, there's so much information out there, it's almost too much.

I also make movies that can be seen on a small screen, as I shoot on digital video. Hopefully they can be seen small and can live like that.

You cannot make anything worthwhile in this world unless you have first developed and transformed yourself.

It's fortunately a kind of society we live in where we can be diverse. People can take different paths and not feel like they're doing something wrong.

The conventional mind is passive - it consumes information and regurgitates it in familiar forms. The dimensional mind is active, transforming everything it digests into something new and original, creating instead of consuming.

Obviously there's Netflix, iTunes, and Amazon and all these other outlets. Fake It So Real is now on Fandor, and I think people have actually seen it there, which is fine.

Strike the shepherd and the sheep will scatter

If you're meant to do something like writing and you end up going into banking or finance, your going to be miserable. You're trying to fit something into a square peg and a round hole. It's just never going to work.

The pyramid would start at the bottom: you don't know who you are or what you're intended to do in life. And so, the X factor - the ingredient that will make you powerful, that will make you successful is your energy and drive and your tenacity. If you've got that, there's nothing in the world that's going to stop you.

Everything is personal.

Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. 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. 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.

Only create associations with positive affinities. Make this a rule of life and you will benefit more than from all the therapy in the world.

We must create our own world or we will die from inaction

Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.

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.

Be relentless in your pursuit for expansion.

Expand your notion of what adversity is.

Hip-hop, you can't really do that when you're in your 50s.

Be brutal with the past, especially your own, and have no respect for the philosophies that are foisted on you from outside.

Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. 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.

In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.

All masters want to appear more brilliant than other people.

One of the things I've been talking about with my critical writing and my own work is that these movies are seen differently in a theatrical space. It's very important to me. I edit films to be seen theatrically, like fiction material I've worked on like Listen Up Phillip or other documentaries.

You can never get rid of all of your fears. Some are necessary and a part of life. But most of our fears are illusory, based on risks or threats that exist only in our minds. Such fears constrain and make you miserable. The feeling of moving past a particular fear is one of liberation and freedom.

I've always been kind of a strategic thinking person - I love sports for instance, but my interest in sports is 'cause I love watching strategy in action or playing it. I'm not into the drama so much, of the physical action. I'm interested in the coach and how he's strategizing.

I think the homeless thing is very interesting and I think is an incredible exercise.

As most people when I entered the work world, suddenly people are playing games, being manipulative, being a little bit nasty, you get tricked or you're kind of naive and you do something and people come steal your idea.

I have an argument that to master any field, it's simple: it's a function of time. How much you devote yourself to the process, how much experience you get, how much you're willing to expand your limits, how willing you are to develop your own style. If you're willing to put 10,000 hours, something amazing is going to happen.

My greatest wish is that a certain way of looking at the world, a way I show in all of my books, gets into my readers' heads, and slowly alters their perception.

Real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.

Still uncertain as to our identity, we think that what matters in the work world is gaining attention and making friends. And these misconceptions and naïveté are brutally exposed in the light of the real world.

You must always be prepared to place a bet on yourself, on your future, by heading in a direction that others seem to fear.

You are facing death and danger and competition, but at any moment, you can decide to have a fearless mindset.

Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power

We happen to live in an era that is incredibly wrapped up in notions of political correctness; everything is seen through the lens of politics. But being political and politically correct is just another way of fighting, another form of power and strategy, an insidious means of manipulation.

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it's bad attention.

Actually, your past successes are your biggest obstacle: every battle, every war, is different, and you cannot assume that what worked before will work today.

I like lecturing and going around the world and giving talks and I like doing consulting and helping people.

Religion is the great balm of existence because it takes us outside ourselves, connects us to something larger

I have examples of people who find their way back later on in life, in their 30's, 40's, it can happen in your 50's, I'm sure it can. It's not really a science. It's maybe more of an art.

An ecosystem that has the maximum amount of diversity is the richest.