Top 100 Robert Greene Quotes
#1. Sovereign of beauty, like the spray she grows;Compass'd she is with thorns and canker'd bower.Yet, were she willing to be pluck'd and worn,She would be gather'd, though she grew on thorn.
Robert Greene
#2. Sometimes any emotion is better than the boredom of security.
Robert Greene
#3. There is a popular saying in Japan that goes "Tada yori takai mono wa nai," meaning: "Nothing is more costly than something given free of charge." THE UNSPOKEN WAY, MICHIHIRO MATSUMOTO, 1988
Robert Greene
#4. Through continual exposure to people and by attempting to think inside of them we can gain an increasing sense of their perspective, but this requires effort on our part.
Robert Greene
#5. 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.
Robert Greene
#6. The mighty lion toys with the mouse that crosses his path - any other reaction would mar his fearsome reputation.
Robert Greene
#7. Sadness of any sort is also seductive, particularly if it seems deep-rooted, even spiritual, rather than needy or pathetic - it makes people come to you.
Robert Greene
#8. Self absorption is anti-seductive; it is a sign of insecurity.
Robert Greene
#9. As a writer you know you don't have to deal with a lot of the crap that most people deal with, the political things. Every couple of years when your book comes out then you have to go into these fights with the publisher and the publicist and that's it.
Robert Greene
#10. In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it's bad attention.
Robert Greene
#11. The pain is kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction?
Robert Greene
#12. You could have a lot of money at your fingertips, the finest education and intellectual knowledge, but if you are governed by fear none of that will matter. You will remain tied to dead ideas and stale strategies. You will not be able to adapt. You will lose what you have.
Robert Greene
#13. Never whine, never complain, never try to justify yourself.
Robert Greene
#14. Lord, protect me from my friends; I can take care of my enemies.
Robert Greene
#15. In following your inclinations and moving toward mastery, you make a great contribution to society, enriching it with discoveries and insights, and making the most of the diversity in nature and among human society.
Robert Greene
#16. Do not fight them. Instead think of them the way you think of children, or pets, not important enough to affect your mental balance
Robert Greene
#17. If, for example, you are miserly by nature, you will never go beyond a certain limit; only generous souls attain greatness.
Robert Greene
#18. Your ability to work with people directly affects your ability to get work done in the world.
Robert Greene
#19. Compelling spectacles are not to reach a niche market, it could be for reaching a niche marketing but on a grand scale. This is for grand marketing.
Robert Greene
#20. The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information - we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.
Robert Greene
#21. 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.
Robert Greene
#22. Remember the following: Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your
Robert Greene
#23. You are like a hunter: your knowledge of every detail of the forest and of the ecosystem as a whole will give you many more options for survival and success.
Robert Greene
#24. News makes things black and white. Documentary filmmaking should do the opposite.
Robert Greene
#25. It is time to reverse this prejudice against conscious effort and to see the powers we gain through practice and discipline as eminently inspiring and even miraculous.
Robert Greene
#26. Everything that happens to you is a form of instruction if you pay attention.
Robert Greene
#27. The human tongue is a beast that few can master.
Robert Greene
#29. There is too little mystery in the world; too many people say exactly what they feel or want.
Robert Greene
#30. Playing with appearances and mastering the arts of deception are among the aesthetic pleasures of life. They are also key components in the acquisition of power.
Robert Greene
#31. Ah! what is love! It is a pretty thing, As sweet unto a shepherd as a king, And sweeter too; For kings have cares that wait upon a crown, And cares can make the sweetest love to frown.
Robert Greene
#32. Never be distracted by people's glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.
Robert Greene
#33. If it is money, you will choose a place for your apprenticeship that offers the biggest paycheck. Inevitably, in such a place you will feel greater pressures to prove yourself worthy of such pay, often before you are really ready.
Robert Greene
#34. People want to feel united, they want to have that religious sense they want to feel like at a rave 10,000 people at the rave are feeling the same emotions, a very primal need that's not being fulfilled in the world today.
Robert Greene
#35. Confidence is important, but if it is not based on a realistic appraisal of who you are, it is mere grandiosity and smugness.
Robert Greene
#37. We must create our own world or we will die from inaction
Robert Greene
#38. When you are faced with deficiencies instead of strengths and inclinations, this is the strategy you must assume: ignore your weaknesses and resist the temptation to be more like others.
Robert Greene
#39. These steps are: Deep Observation (The Passive Mode), Skills Acquisition (The Practice Mode), and Experimentation (The Active Mode). Keep
Robert Greene
#40. In a world growing increasingly banal and familiar, what seems enigmatic instantly draws attention. Never make it too clear what you are doing or about to do. Do not show all your cards. An air of mystery heightens your presence; it also creates anticipation - everyone
Robert Greene
#41. So I'd gotten rid of that negativity and I'd show, Well, here's something done right. Here's the mistake, but here's how to fix the mistake.
Robert Greene
#42. People around you, constantly under the pull of their emotions, change their ideas by the day or by the hour, depending on their mood. You must never assume that what people say or do in a particular moment is a statement of their permanent desires.
Robert Greene
#43. 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.
Robert Greene
#44. 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.
Robert Greene
#45. 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.
Robert Greene
#46. Power rarely ends up in the hands of those who start a revolution, or even those who further it; power sticks to those who bring it to a conclusion
Robert Greene
#47. I think what happened with Brandy [Burre]is what happens with a lot of people. You make these decisions for comfort and stability, and then eventually those same things that are comforting and stable end up putting walls around you that you didn't expect.
Robert Greene
#48. If you are armed with knowledge, if you are aware that certain dynamics are at play then you have options. You can play defense, you can ignore certain person and take the consequences perhaps with a game plan in mind and it goes on, you've increased your options.
Robert Greene
#49. One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil. - FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Robert Greene
#50. An emotional response to a situation is the single greatest barrier to power, a mistake that will cost you a lot more than any temporary satisfaction you might gain by expressing your feelings.
Robert Greene
#51. The world wants to assign you a role in life. And once you accept that role you are doomed.
Robert Greene
#52. Establishing your differences with the mentor is an important part of your self-development, whether he is of the good or bad parent type.
Robert Greene
#53. Love is a lock that linketh noble minds,
Faith is the key that shuts the spring of love.
Robert Greene
#54. Desire is both imitative (we like what others like) and competitive (we want to take away from others what they have). As children, we wanted to monopolize the attention of a parent, to draw it away from other siblings. This sense of rivalry ... makes people compete for the attention.
Robert Greene
#55. Too much respect for other people's wisdom will make you depreciate your own.
Robert Greene
#56. If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won't catch on when you lead him into a trap.
Robert Greene
#57. When you raise your opinion of yourself and what you are capable of it has a decided influence on what you do.
Robert Greene
#58. 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.
Robert Greene
#59. Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do NOT do, what you do not ALLOW yourself to get dragged into.
Robert Greene
#60. Learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.
Robert Greene
#61. No greater mischief could be wrought
Than love united to a jealous thought.
Robert Greene
#62. Stop shallow water from running, it will rage; tread on a worm and it will turn.
Robert Greene
#63. Twere sin to stain fair Venus' courts with blood
Robert Greene
#64. Everything changes. This is the key to feeling powerful, but also to being creative in the world.
Robert Greene
#65. A Prince asked the dying spanish statesman, "Does your Excellency forgive all your enemies?" "I do not have to forgive all my enemies," answered the stateman, "I have had them all shot.
Robert Greene
#66. 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.
Robert Greene
#67. The need for certainty is the greatest disease the Mind faces
Robert Greene
#68. Religion humanizes this universe, makes us feel important and loved. We are not animals governed by uncontrollable drives, animals that die for no apparent reason, but creatures made in the image of supreme being
Robert Greene
#69. The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
Robert Greene
#70. Mastery is not a function of I.Q. or natural talent or wealthy parents who can send you to the best school, but rather the result of going through a learning process, fueled by the desire to grow and the persistence to push past any obstacles.
Robert Greene
#71. Understand: A person of power instills a kind of fear by deliberately unsettling those around him to keep the initative on his side.
Robert Greene
#72. Most people are passive aggressive in this world. I have the idea that the human being is born with a kind of reservoir of aggression. We are inherently somewhat aggressive creatures and we either channel that in direct ways or we channel it in indirect ways and become passive aggressive.
Robert Greene
#73. A few years ago, for my birthday, Sean Price Williams said, "I'll give you one free day of shooting." He shot Kati with an I and co-shot Fake It So Real. While we've always worked together, I didn't want him to do it for free, so he cashed in his birthday chip and came for this one day.
Robert Greene
#74. 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.
Robert Greene
#75. 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.
Robert Greene
#76. Mistakes and failures are precisely your means of education. They tell you about your own inadequacies.
Robert Greene
#77. Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.
Robert Greene
#78. On woman Nature did bestow two eyes, Like Hemian's bright lamps, in matchless beauty shining, Whose beams do soonest captivate the wise And wary heads, made rare by art's refining.
Robert Greene
#79. You must be the mirror, training your mind to try to see yourself as others see you.
Robert Greene
#80. When you meet a swordsman, draw your sword: Do not recite poetry to one who is not a poet.
Robert Greene
#81. Person who cannot control his words shows that he cannot control himself, and is unworthy of respect.
Robert Greene
#82. People are more complicated than the masks they wear in society.
Robert Greene
#84. For as one star another far exceeds, So souls in heaven are placed by their deeds.
Robert Greene
#85. As the great physicist Max Planck put it, scientists must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by an artistically creative imagination.
Robert Greene
#86. Napoleon advised: Place your iron hand inside a velvet glove.
Robert Greene
#87. Anger is the most destructive of emotional responses, for it clouds your vision the most.
Robert Greene
#88. 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.
Robert Greene
#89. Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit.
Robert Greene
#90. But the greatest battle of all is with yourself - your weaknesses, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end. You must declare unceasing war on yourself.
Robert Greene
#91. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;When thou art old there's grief enough for thee.
Robert Greene
#92. Defeat Them in Detail: The Divide and Conquer Strategy. Look at the parts and determine how to control the individual parts, create dissension and leverage it.
Robert Greene
#94. A man said to a Dervish: "Why do I not see you more often?" The Dervish replied, "Because the words 'Why have you not been to see me?' are sweeter to my ear than the words 'Why have you come again?
Robert Greene
#95. Never pick a fight with someone you're not sure you can defeat.
Robert Greene
#96. Never take your position for granted and never let any favors you receive go to your head.
Robert Greene
#97. Moving towards mastery will naturally bring you a more global outlook, but it is always wise to expedite the process by training yourself early on to continually enlarge your perspective.
Robert Greene
#98. Power goes to those who end the revolution. Not the one who starts it.
Robert Greene
#99. Power is a game, and in games you do not judge your opponents by their intentions but by the effects of their actions.
Robert Greene
#100. Pioneer a totally new field, known as neurobotics.
Robert Greene
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