The 48 Laws of Power

Law 18: Don’t isolate yourself behind a fortress. Have eyes and ears everywhere.

Law 19: Know your opponents and who you’re dealing with.

Law 20: Stay neutral as long as possible to maintain your independence (vs committing to 1 side).

Law 21: Make your victims feel smarter than you, so they drop their guard.

Law 22: Use surrender as a tool. Bide your time for retaliation.

Law 23: Concentrate your forces. Don’t spread them too thin.

Law 24: Be a masterful courtier to balance the various players and power brokers.

Law 25: Create your own identity and use it like a costume.

Law 26: Don’t dirty your hands. Get others to do your dirty work.

Law 27: Create a cult-like following. Play on what people want to see/hear.

Law 28: Act boldly, so you seem confident.

Law 29: Plan till the end, so you won’t be caught by surprise.

Law 30: Make your achievements seem effortless. Don’t show your real success secrets.

Law 31: Control the options but let people think they’re in control.

Law 32: Play to people’s fantasies so they keep following you.

Law 33: Find your opponent’s fatal weakness to break their defences.

Law 34: Act in the way you want to be treated. Be regal and authoritative.

Law 35: Master the art of timing. Strike only at the right hour.

Law 36: Feign disinterest and ignore what you can’t have.

Law 37: Dazzle people with spectacles so they don’t see what you’re really doing.

Law 38: Hide your unorthodox thinking. Pretend to blend in.

Law 39: Stir up waters to catch the fish. Make your opponents reckless while you stay calm.

Law 40: Beware the free lunch. There’re always strings attached.

Law 41: Chart a new course rather than try a big man’s shoes.

Law 42: Strike the shepherd to scatter the sheep. Isolate the leader.

Law 43: Win both hearts and minds. Appeal to both feelings and logic.

Law 44: Unbalance and confuse with the mirror effect (mask reality with illusion).

Law 45: Introduce change gradually. Drastic reforms bring resistance.

Law 46: Don’t seem too perfect or you’ll invite jealousy.

Law 47: Don’t push too far in victory. Know when to stop.

Law 48: Be formless and unpredictable.

• Learning the game of power requires a certain way of looking at the world, a shifting of perspective.
• The most important of these skills is the ability to master your emotions.
• Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most.
• Deception is a developed art of civilization and the most potent weapon in the game of power.
• Never discriminate as to whom you study and whom you trust.

• Always make those above you feel comfortably superior.
• Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
• Masters do not care about science or empirical truth or the latest invention ; they care about their name and their glory.
• Never trust anyone completely and study everyone, including friends and loved ones.

• In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies.
• While a friend expects more and more favors, and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expected nothing and got everything.
• A Chinese proverb compares friends to the jaws and teeth of a dangerous animal: If you are not careful, you will find them chewing you up.

• Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.
• As Lincoln said, you destroy an enemy when you make a friend of him.
• Without enemies around us, we grow lazy.
• Nothing is stable in the realm of power, and even the closest of friends can be transformed into the worst of enemies.
• Never let the presence of enemies upset or distress you—you are far better off with a declared opponent or two than not knowing where your real enemies lie.

• Without a worthy opponent, a man or group cannot grow stronger.

1. Be certain that in the long run you will emerge victorious. Never pick a fight with someone you are not sure you can defeat.
2. If you have no apparent enemies, you must sometimes set up a convenient target, even turning a friend into an enemy.
3. Use such enemies to define your cause more clearly to the public, even framing it as a struggle of good against evil.

• 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.

• 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.
• The best deceptions require a screen of smoke to distract people attention from your real purpose.
• Hide your intentions behind the comfortable and familiar.

• Psychology of anticipation: Our behavior conforms to patterns, or so we like to think.
• When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control.
• A Person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself.
• The human tongue is a beast that few can master.

• Your silence will make other people uncomfortable. Humans are machines of interpretation and explanation; they have to know what you are thinking. When you carefully control what you reveal, they cannot pierce your intentions or your meaning.
• Once the words are out, you cannot take them back.

In the beginning, you must work to establish a reputation for one outstanding quality, whether generosity or honesty or cunning. This quality sets you apart and gets other people to talk about you. You then make your reputation known to as many people as possible (subtly, though; take care to build slowly, and with a firm foundation), and watch as it spreads like wildfire.

• Learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
• Solid reputation increases your presence and exaggerates your strengths without your having to spend much energy.
• Once it is solid, do not let yourself get angry or defensive at the slanderous comments of your enemies—that reveals insecurity, not confidence in your reputation.

• You have to learn to attract attention.
• At the start of your career, you must attach your name and reputation to a quality, an image, that sets you apart from other people.
• This image can be something like a characteristic style of dress, or a personality quirk that amuses people and gets talked about.

• Society craves larger-than-life figures, people who stand above the general mediocrity.
• 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.
• In a world growing increasingly banal and familiar, what seems enigmatic instantly draws attention.

• Once in the limelight you must constantly renew it by adapting and varying your method of courting attention. If you don’t, the public will grow tired, will take you for granted, and will move on to a newer star. The game requires constant vigilance and creativity.
• Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do.

• An air of mystery heightens your presence; it also creates anticipation—everyone will be watching you to see what happens next.
• People are enthralled by mystery; because it invites constant interpretation, they never tire of it.
• Power of the mysterious: It invites layers of interpretation, excites our imagination, seduces us into believing that it conceals something marvelous.

• An air of mystery can make the mediocre appear intelligent and profound.
• By simply holding back, keeping silent, occasionally uttering ambiguous phrases, deliberately appearing inconsistent, and acting odd in the subtlest of ways, you will emanate an aura of mystery. The people around you will then magnify that aura by constantly trying to interpret you.

• Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause.
• Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered.
• Never do yourself what others can do for you.

• If you try to do it all on your own, you run yourself ragged, waste energy, and burn yourself out. It is far better to conserve your forces, pounce on the work others have done, and find a way to make it your own.
• You must secure the credit for yourself and keep others from stealing it away, or from piggy-backing on your hard work.

• 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.
• Their creativity thus becomes yours, and you seem a genius to the world.
• Learn to use the knowledge of the past and you will look like a genius, even when you are really just a clever borrower.

The Vulture. Of all the creatures in the jungle, he has it the easiest. The hard work of others becomes his work; their failure to survive becomes his nourishment. Keep an eye on the Vulture—while you are hard at work, he is circling above.

Do not fight him, join him.

• The most effective action is to stay back, keep calm, and let others be frustrated by the traps you lay for them, playing for long-term power rather than quick victory.
• Everything depends on the sweetness of your bait. If your trap is attractive enough, the turbulence of your enemies’ emotions and desires will blind them to reality. The greedier they become, the more they can be led around.

• Good warriors make others come to them, and do not go to others. This is the principle of emptiness and fullness of others and self.
• Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas indirectly.
• When caught in a lie, the more emotional and certain you appear, the less likely it seems that you are lying.

• Do not consort with fools, especially those who consider themselves wise.
• Never associate with those who share your defects—they will reinforce everything that holds you back.
• Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.
• Make others dependent on you.

• An act of kindness, generosity, or honesty is often the most powerful form of distraction because it disarms other people’s suspicions. It turns them into children, eagerly lapping up any kind of affectionate gesture.
• Honesty is one of the best ways to disarm the wary,
• A gift brings out the child in us, instantly lowering our defenses.

• Self-interest is the lever that will move people.
• 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.
• Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions.

• Make others talk endlessly about themselves and inadvertently reveal their intentions and plans.
• If you have reason to suspect that a person is telling you a lie, look as though you believed every word he said. This will give him courage to go on; he will become more vehement in his assertions, and in the end betray himself.

• While spying gives you a third eye, disinformation puts out one of your enemy’s eyes.
• Create value through scarcity.
• Law of scarcity in the science of economics: By withdrawing something from the market, you create instant value.
• Make yourself less accessible and you increase the value of your presence.

A Viper crushed beneath your foot but left alive, will rear up and bite you with a double dose of venom. An enemy that is left around is like a half-dead viper that you nurse back to health. Time makes the venom grow stronger.

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 you. But a point is inevitably reached where too much presence creates the opposite effect: The more you are seen and heard from, the more your value degrades.

• Learn to keep yourself obscure and make people demand your return. Make what you are offering the world rare and hard to find, and you instantly increase its value.
• Be deliberately unpredictable.
• When people cannot figure out what you are doing, they are kept in a state of terror—waiting, uncertain, confused.
• The weak benefit by the quarrels of the mighty.

• You sometimes need to strike without warning, to make others tremble when they least expect it.
• Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible.
• Humans are social creatures by nature, power depends on social interaction and circulation.
• Desire is like a virus: If we see that someone is desired by other people, we tend to find this person desirable too.

• First, in judging and measuring your opponent, never rely on your instincts. Nothing can substitute for gathering concrete knowledge.
• Second, never trust appearances. Never trust the version that people give of themselves—it is utterly unreliable.
• Do not commit yourself to anybody or anything, for that is to be a slave, a slave to every man....

• Maintaining your independence and self-reliance will gain you more respect.
• Make your victims feel smart—and not just smart, but smarter than you are.
• Beware of dissipating your powers: strive constantly to concentrate them.
• By expressing modest admiration for other people’s achievements, you paradoxically call attention to your own.

• The world is plagued by greater and greater division—within countries, political groups, families, even individuals. We are all in a state of total distraction and diffusion, hardly able to keep our minds in one direction before we are pulled in a thousand others.
• 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.

• 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.
• Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define it for you.

• You must be constantly aware of your audience—of what will please them and what will bore them.
• Learn to play many roles, to be whatever the moment requires.
• Our good name and reputation depend more on what we conceal than on what we reveal.
• All men make mistakes, but the wise conceal the blunders they have made, while fools make them public.

• Cat’s Paw. In the fable, the Monkey grabs the paw of his friend, the Cat, and uses it to fish chestnuts out of the fire, thus getting the nuts he craves, without hurting himself.
• Truly powerful people keep their hands clean. Only good things surround them, and the only announcements they make are of glorious achievements.
• Do everything pleasant yourself, everything unpleasant through third parties.

• If you have power and are secure in it, you should sometimes play the penitent: With a sorrowful look, you ask for forgiveness from those weaker than you.
• Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow. Keep your words vague but full of promise ; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking.

HOW TO CREATE A CULT IN FIVE EASY STEPS

Step 1: Keep It Vague; Keep It Simple.

Step 2: Emphasize the Visual and the Sensual over the Intellectual.

Step 3: Borrow the Forms of Organized Religion to Structure the Group.

Step 4: Disguise Your Source of Income.

Step 5: Set Up an Us- Vs -Them Dynamic.

• 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.
• Find the belief, cause, or fantasy that will make them believe with a passion and they will imagine the rest, worshipping you as healer, prophet, genius, whatever you like.

• If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution.
• Better to enter with boldness.
• The path of pleasure never leads to glory!
• The sudden bold move, without discussion or warning, obliterates these toeholds, and builds your authority.
• Voice what the public feels—the expression of shared feelings is always powerful.

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. Society is full of those who think daring thoughts but lack the guts to print and publicize them. The world will enjoy the spectacle, and will honor the underdog—you, that is—with glory and power.

• 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.
• Never begin anything until you have reflected what will be the end of it.
• Plan in detail before you act—do not let vague plans lead you into trouble.

• Your conclusion must be crystal clear, and you must keep it constantly in mind. You must also figure out how to ward off the vultures circling overhead, trying to live off the carcass of your creation.
• Once you have examined the future possibilities and decided on your target, you must build in alternatives and be open to new routes toward your goal.

• When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more.
• Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.
• As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else.
• Avoid the temptation of showing how clever you are—it is far more clever to conceal the mechanisms of your cleverness.

• For power depends vitally on appearances and the illusions you create. Your public actions are like artworks: They must have visual appeal, must create anticipation, even entertain.
• There is another reason for concealing your shortcuts and tricks: When you let this information out, you give people ideas they can use against you.
• The more mystery surrounds your actions, the more awesome your power seems.

• 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.
• Finally, because you achieve your accomplishments with grace and ease, people believe that you could always do more if you tried harder. This elicits not only admiration but a touch of fear.

• 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.
• There is a saying: If you can get the bird to walk into the cage on its own, it will sing that much more prettily.
• The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant.

• To gain power, you must be a source of pleasure for those around you—and pleasure comes from playing to people’s fantasies. Never promise a gradual improvement through hard work; rather, promise the moon, the great and sudden transformation, the pot of gold.
• 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.
• Another form of the fantasy of the exotic is simply the hope for relief from boredom.
• Never be too direct in describing the fantasy—keep it vague.

• The Moon. Unattainable, always changing shape, disappearing and reappearing. We look at it, imagine, wonder, and pine—never familiar, continuous provoker of dreams. Do not offer the obvious. Promise the moon.
• You should play with such a fantasy, you too must carefully cultivate distance and not allow your “common” personal to become too familiar or it will not project as fantasy.

• People’s need for validation and recognition, their need to feel important, is the best kind of weakness to exploit.
• All you have to do is find ways to make people feel better about their taste, their social standing, their intelligence. Once the fish are hooked, you can reel them in again and again, for years—you are filling a positive role, giving them what they cannot get on their own.

• 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.
• 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.
• Angry = Sign of insecurity

The Hawk. Patiently and silently it circles the sky, high above, all-seeing with its powerful eyes. Those below have no awareness that they are being tracked. Suddenly, when the moment arrives, the hawk swoops down with a speed that cannot be de fended against; before its prey knows what has happened, the bird’s viselike talons have carried it up into the sky.

• Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.
• Never show that something has affected you, or that you are offended—that only shows you have acknowledged a problem.

• If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question. The image, on the other hand, imposes itself as a given. It discourages questions, creates forceful associations, resists unintended interpretations, communicates instantly, and forges bonds that transcend social differences.
• Images bring people together.

• The symbol is a shortcut of expression, containing dozens of meanings in one simple phrase or object.
• The symbol contains untold power.
• Always find a symbol to represent your cause—the more emotional associations, the better.
• The best way to use images and symbols is to organize them into a grand spectacle that awes people and distracts them from unpleasant realities.

• People love what is grand, spectacular, and larger than life.
• Think with the few and speak with the many.
• You can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage. 
• In the face of a hot-headed enemy, finally, an excellent response is no response.

• Follow the Talleyrand tactic: Nothing is as infuriating as a man who keeps his cool while others are losing theirs.
• What is offered for free is dangerous-it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation.
• By giving the appropriate gift, you put the recipient under obligation.

• Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
• Do not waste your time lashing out in all directions at what seems to be a manyheaded enemy. Find the one head that matters—the person with willpower, or smarts, or, most important of all, charisma.
• Powerful people never waste time.
• The most effective form of isolation is somehow to separate your victims from their power base.

A Flock of Fatted Sheep. Do not waste precious time trying to steal a sheep or two; do not risk life and limb by setting upon the dogs that guard the flock. Aim at the shepherd. Lure him away and the dogs will follow. Strike him down and the flock will scatter—you can pick them off one by one.

• If you draw a bow, draw the strongest. If you use an arrow, use the longest. To shoot a rider, first shoot his horse. To catch a gang of bandits, first capture its leader.
• 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.

• Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.
• With most people the heart is the key: They are like children, ruled by their emotions. To soften them up, alternate harshness with mercy. Play on their basic fears, and also their loves—freedom, family, etc. Once you break them down, you will have a lifelong friend and fiercely loyal ally.

• Push people to despair, then give them relief.
• If they expect pain and you give them pleasure, you win their hearts.
• Ideas are most easily communicated through metaphors and imagery.
• When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact.

• Neutralizing 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.
• It is also useful for disguising those situations in which you have no particular strategy yourself.
• You give people the feeling that you share their thoughts and goals.

• The goal of power is always to lower people’s resistance to you.
• Create a kind of mirror of their behavior.
• The wordless communication, the indirect compliment, contains the most power.
• Persuasion is more effective than force.
• “Envy is a weed that should not be watered.”
• Upon occasion, reveal a harmless defect in your character.
• People are creatures of habit.

• Radical change had to be cloaked in the comfortable clothes of the past.
• The changes you make must seem less innovative than they are.
• It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable.
• The powerful vary their rhythms and patterns, change course, adapt to circumstance, and learn to improvise.

Good luck is more dangerous than bad luck. Bad luck teaches valuable lessons about patience, timing, and the need to be prepared for the worst; good luck deludes you into the opposite lesson, making you think your brillliance will carry you through. Your fortune will inevitably turn, and when it does you will be completely unprepared. 

• The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.
• Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten.
• Changes are signs of life and vitality.
• Power can only thrive if it is flexible in its forms.
• Train yourself to take nothing personally.
•  Never show any defensiveness.

•  Only formlessness allows you to truly surprise your enemies—by the time they figure out where you are and what you are up to, it is too late.
• Be like a slippery ball that cannot be held: Let no one know what gets to you, or where your weaknesses lie.
• 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.