Law 1: Never Outshine The Master.

• Research and practice endlessly before appearing in public.
• Conceal the effort behind one’s work. One never sees the source of a god’s power revealed; one only sees its effects.
• Revealing tricks lets others use them against you.
• The more mystery surro...

• Drunk with success and sick with ambition, empires expand to grotesque proportions and meet a ruin that is total.
• Concentrate on a single goal and beat it into submission.
• Extent alone never rises above mediocrity, and it is the misfortune of men with wide ge...

• Power is, in many ways, a game of appearance, and when you say less than necessary, you inevitably appear more powerful than you are.
• Once the words are out, you cannot take them back.
• Short answers and silences will put people on the defensi...

• Maintaining power requires social interaction.
• An isolated person is an easy target with limited access to information.
• Choose isolation only as a last resort. 

Key to Power: When faced with threats, resist th...

• You must be guided by reason. To let a momentary thrill or an emotional victory influence or guide your movies will prove fatal.
• History is littered with ruins of victorious empires and corpses of leaders who could not learn to stop and consolidate t...

• In every group, there is a person who controls the power, determining the group's effectiveness. 
• Find the source and isolate them: physically, politically, or psychologically.
• Lure him away from their power base at the criti...

• People are highly susceptible to the emotions and pathologies of those they spend time with.
• The most damaging types of infectors are those who are perpetually dissatisfied and aggrieved.

Key to Power: Choose who you are associated with carefully. 

• What is offered free often comes with a psychological price tag.
• Everything must be judged by its cost, and everything has a price.
• Value the strategic generosity — “give when you are about to take” and put the recipient under obligation.
• Be flexible ...

• The 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.
• The Narcissus Effect: Reflect their desires, values, and tastes.
• The Mo...

• Many successors struggle when they have to succeed a great leader parent.
• 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 ...

Part I: Have a Scapegoat to Take The Blame.

Our good name and reputation depend more on what we conceal than on what we reveal.

• Shift the guilt and sin to an outside figure—object, animal, or man—which is banished.
• Set up the

Part I: Be Courted By All.

Play the Virgin Queen: Give them hope but never satisfaction.

• Put yourself in the middle between competing powers.
• Lure one side with the promise of your help; the other side, always wanting to o...

• The credit for an invention or creation is as important, if not more important, than the invention itself.
• Keep your creation quiet until you can be sure there are no vultures circling overhead.
• Learn to take advantage of other people...

• Every crowd has a silver lining and they tend to act in conjunction.
• Attach your name and reputation to a quality, an image, that sets you apart from other people.
• Attack the most visible, most famous, most powerful p...

• Find the Helpless Child: Most weaknesses begin in childhood before the self builds up compensatory defenses.
• Find the Weak Link: Win the favor of those behind the scenes and you indirectly influence the king. Find the one person who will bend under p...

• The Reality: Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair number of sacrifices, and a lot of patience.
• The Fantasy: A sudden transformation will bring a total change in one’s fortunes, bypassing work, luck, self-sacrifice,...

• Forge a new identity, one of your own making, one that has had no boundaries assigned to it.
• Develop self-awareness to take control of your appearances and emotions.
• Create a memorable character that compels attention.

• When you argue with someone, even if they seem to agree with you, you can never be certain how they will react.
• Demonstrating your point is more effective and powerful. 

Key to Power: Learn to demonstrate the correctness of your ideas...

• Use spies or be a spy yourself.
• Pay attention at social gatherings where people's guards are downs.
• Share a fake confession and someone else will give you a real one.

Key to Power: Suppress oneself in the conversation, to make...

• The powerful are not locked into a single system; they are constantly adapting their systems to suit their needs.
• 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...

• Keep it Vague; Keep it Simple: Most people want to hear that a simple solution will cure their problems.
• Emphasize the Visual and the Sensual over the Intellectual: Create a spectacle.
• Borrow the Forms of Organized Religion: ...

• The Bolder The Better: Ask for the moon and you’ll be surprised how often you get it. The largeness of scale deceives the human eye.
• Lions Circle the Hesitant Prey: Everything depends on perception, and once you demonstrate a willingness to compromis...

• Chinese history abounds with examples of leaders who left their enemies alive out of mercy but returned to haunt them.
• Recognize that you will accumulate enemies who you cannot bring over to your side, and that to leave them any escape will mean you are never secure.
• When we ...

• Humans are creatures of habit and change upsets our routines.
• The man who initiates strong reforms often becomes the scapegoat for any kind of dissatisfaction.
• Preach change, but maintain the comforting appearance of familiar traditions.
...

• Nothing is more terrifying than the sudden and unpredictable. We do not know when they will strike. After one has occurred, we wait in terror for the next one.
• Unpredictability draws attention and gets people talking, especially if you are the under...

• Words stir up arguments and division; images, which bypass rational thought, create powerful emotional associations.
• Use symbols to rally, excite, and unify your followers.
• If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question.

• Intelligence, taste, and sophistication are all things you can downplay to reassure others they are more advanced than you.
• The easier they think it is to prey on you, the more easily you can turn the tables.

Key to Power: I...

• The key to persuasion is working on people's emotions and playing on their intellectual weaknesses.
• Play on Contrasts: Push people to despair, then give them relief. If they expect pain and you give them pleasure, you win their hearts.
• A grea...

• Achieving power often requires seeking help from those above you.
• To succeed in getting what you want, you need to understand their motives and tie them in with yours.

Key to Power: Understand the person you are dealing with, and not ...

• When you are weak, there is nothing to be gained by fighting a useless fight. No one comes to help the weak.
• People trying to make a show of their authority are easily deceived by the surrender tactic: inwardly you stay firm, but outwardly you bend.
• Your outw...

• People forget the favors they have received and imagine they have earned their success on their own merits.
• While a friend expects more and more favors and seethes with jealousy, these former enemies expect nothing and got everything.

• You choose to let things bother you. Turn your back on what cannot harm you in the long run.
• If there is something you want but that you realize you cannot have, the worse thing you can do is draw attention to your disappointment by complaining about it.
• Treat your m...

Never Underestimate the Power of Envy:

• Once success happens, the people to fear the most are those in your own circle, the friends and acquaintances you have left behind.
• Beware signs of envy: excessive praise, hypercritical people,

• Give before you take.
• Selective honesty is best employed on your first encounter with someone.
• Calculated acts of kindness can turn a Capone into a gullible child.
• Exceptions: When you have a history of deceit behind ...

• Most unconventional people learn to blend in with others and to share their differing views only with like-minded people.
• Display conventional behavior and mouth conventional ideas without having to believe in them.
• Once you have established yourself in a position of power, y...

• Withdrawal and disappearance are classic ways of controlling the options.
• Give people a sense of how things will fall apart without you, and you offer them a “choice”: I stay away, and you suffer the consequences, or I return under circumstances that I dictate.
• Color ...

• The ending is everything that determines the glory, the money, the prize.
• Overcome the natural tendency to react to things as they happen, and instead train oneself to step back.
• So much of power is not what you do but what ...

• When the waters are still, your opponents have the time and space to plot against you. So stir the waters, force the fish to the surface, get them to act before they are ready, and steal the initiative.
• Play on uncontrollable emotions: pride, vanity...

• Establish a reputation for one outstanding quality that sets you apart and gets other people to talk about you.
• A solid reputation increases your presence and exaggerates your strengths without having to spend much energy.
• It is wise to assoc...

The Laws of Court Politics

• Avoid Ostentation: modesty is always preferable.
• Practice Nonchalance: your talent must appear to flow naturally, with ease.
• Be Frugal with Flattery: flatter indirectly...

• Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution; power sticks to those who bring a conclusion.
• Long Time: Have remarkable patience, control your emotions, and take advantage of opportunities when they arise.
• Forced Time: Ups...

• Preserve and enhance your status by withdrawing at the right moment, just before people start getting tired of you.
• Make yourself less accessible to increase your value in others' minds.
• Image: The Sun. It can only be appreciated in its absence. ...

The Arrogant and Proud Man: Any perceived slight will lead to a vengeance of overwhelming violence. Flee these people.

The Hopelessly Insecure Man: Attack you in small bites that will take forever to get big enough for you to notice. Do not stay around him....

• It is within your power to set your own price.
• Ask for less and that is just what you will get. Ask for more, however, and you send a signal that you are worth a king’s ransom.
• The Strategy of the Crown: If we believe we are destined for grea...

• Do not mistake independence for power; power requires a relationship.
• Fear you can control; love, never. Better to have others depend on you out of fear of the consequences of losing you than out of love for your company.
• Make yourself so

Part I: Use Red Herrings.

• Our first instinct is to always trust appearances.
• Cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise dishonesty in other.
• Kill three birds with one stone: appear friendly, concea...