Robert Greene Quotes

Our times might emphasize equality, which we then mistake for the need for everyone to be the same, but what we really mean by this is the equal chance for people to express their differences, to let a thousand flowers bloom.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.

With such a deep rooted interest you can withstand the setbacks and failures, the days of drudgery, and the hard work that are always a part of any creative action. You can ignore the doubters and critics. You will then feel personally committed to solving the problem and will not rest until you do so.

We started filming [with Brandy Burre ]and didn't really know, at first, what we were doing. Eventually, the thing just grabbed a hold of both of us and became what it is. But, yeah, we were very close before and we're even closer now.

The human tongue is a beast that few can master.

The information walls are completely crumbling.

When you understand the fear then you can begin to move past it. So when I hear the people say it's innate, you can't learn it, I just want to hit them in the head.

Fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic- as people give into it, they lose energy and momentum. Their lack of confidence translates into inaction that lowers confidence levels even further, on and on.

If you're really driven and you want something deep, hard enough in life, you're going to get it.

The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken.

I am impressed when I go on the internet and see a lot of young people who've been influenced by the books, or I meet someone who tells me how it has changed their life. To me, that is much more real than sales figures.

Our levels of desire, patience, persistence, and confidence end up playing a much larger role in success than sheer reasoning powers. Feel motivated and energized, we can overcome almost anything. Feeling bored and restless, our minds shut off and we become increasingly passive.

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 precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

A lot of things in history are timing, and it's very peculiar because in retrospect things [and] people can look more brilliant or necessary than they actually were.

If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox way, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.They will find away to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

Life goes by very fast. And the worst thing in life that you can have is a job that you hate, that you have no energy in, that you're not creative with and you're not thinking of the future. To me, might as well be dead.

Everybody in life is struggling for power, and some people use morality and righteousness as a weapon, while others use different means, even passive aggression. From a distance, we are all fighting, and I am looking at this from a distance.

There is something I call social intelligence. You can do a lot in life on your own and you can do all kinds of stuff, but if you're really bad with people, if you're really naive or aggressive and push people away, if you don't know the political environment you're in, it invalidates all the things you know. You're not going to get anywhere.

There is a tremendous problem in modern culture. We have become used to everything coming to us with tremendous speed and ease. It is a culture where discipline and patience is almost impossible to develop.

What I like about the internet, what I see there is that its much more democratic. I have much more control, and if what I write is liked by the public, I have immediate feedback. There are so many things I want to say - about events in the news, politics, the gamesmanship and manipulations I read about, thoughts that occur to me about the power game, advice, on and on.

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.

Along the way, a lot of filmmakers get rid of things that are messy or don't fit in some ways. To me, I want to work with serendipity and things we happened upon. That's our job, that's what the form demands.

Early on in life I knew that I was a writer, that I just wanted to write, I love books, I love literature and after graduating college, I kind of wandered around in Europe learning languages and writing novels and never led anywhere. And then I got into like journalism in New York as a way to kind of maybe find my way into the field and it wasn't a good fit. It just wasn't right for me.

When you have any kind of success in life, that's like the most dangerous moment that you're in because you're going to tend to think wow, I can just keep repeating what I've done. I'm a great person. People love me. All of the sudden they're giving me all of this attention. You get drunk on it and you lose your sense of balance and your sense of detachment. I know it's happened to me.

We're close friends [with Brandy Burre]. We're neighbors. I actually lived two houses over from her for a while and then we were traveling one day and she was looking at the house we currently live in - which was between us - and she's like, "You guys should move here! It's bigger and better!"

If you're not careful people will judge you based on these appearances and they will pigeon hole you that this is the person that you are. Your shy, your aggressive, your this type or that type and you lose the control of the dynamic, they become the ones that determine who you are. A powerful person never loses control of the dynamic they are in someway in control.

You want attention, you want to grab some of that airspace that exists out there in a world that's very difficult to get it because it's so competitive and to get it for more than a few seconds. Any attention is good and that can be what we would normally consider as bad attention so I wanted to make you aware of that dynamic.

Whether people are making narrative cinema or experimental cinematic movie experiences, they all want the biggest screen possible and the quietest room and the most attention to every nuance and detail. Obviously, most people will not see the movie that way, but I can still hope for it, and I'd like to think we will be able to pull it off this time.

If marriage isn't something for me, but I like living with someone or being committed, I can choose this other path as long as she's okay with it but I would hardly say that that should be what other people do. Some people want that, that written paper, that commitment and that means something to them. And I don't in the least look down on it.

Be wary of friends—they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

If you're only ten feet above, then you're better than when you're on the ground.

If you are worried about what others might think and about how your position in the group might be jeopardized, then you will never really create anything.

I often daydream about the future, thinking of the world in 100, 200 years, imagining what it looks like, feels like. I hope that my books are like ghosts that will inhabit this future.

To be strategic in life is like any skill whether it's basketball or learning a language, it takes effort and practice and I think most people don't think that it's something that they could just do, you know, naturally.

It's funny how it reads like a Kubrick-inspired moment, a filmmaker controlling one's mise en scène. What it truly is is a documentary moment.

Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.

I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride.

We're selfish to some degree, that's not a criticism and it doesn't mean that we are all narcissists. But in any situation our minds naturally evolve to what's in it for me? How does this affect me? Can this benefit me? Can this harm me? Then we might move on from that and have a more altruistic point of view about things but that's almost always our initial response.

There are things that you study, classes you've taken, activities you've done that feel right, that feel like they're in your power zone. So it doesn't take incredible amount of effort for you to do it - it just comes more naturally to you.

The music business is just the worst as far as Machiavellian, sharky, evil games going on, as far as manipulation.

Everybody wants power and control in their life.

In the future, the great division will be between those who have trained themselves to handle these complexities and those who are overwhelmed by them -- those who can acquire skills and discipline their minds and those who are irrevocably distracted by all the media around them and can enver focus enough to learn.

When our emotions are engaged, we often have trouble seeing things as they are.

Kati with an I was a New York Times Critics' Pick and I was really happy that it got a run uptown in Harlem at the Maysles Cinema, which is a great space but isn't necessarily the most well attended for a week-long screening.

When someone is not there all the time it gives us space to think about them. Your job in influence and persuasion is to get the other person to think about you or your product without you forcing yourself upon them or without you making them think about you.

The problem is the book business is changing so we're in a difficult moment now and if the business model is changing, I don't know if I'm going to have to look what's in store for me at that level but fortunately, I broke in earlier.

Being the free woman who is sexy and out there is a performance in a way, and being the stay-at-home mom and wife is a performance in itself. All of those performances are living and force you to make decisions about who you really are. Women have to put those performances ahead of things sometimes. Men aren't perceived in the same way.

Win through your actions, never through argument.