Quotes by Robert Greene

If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it. Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous: Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you committ through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

The Crown. Place it upon your head and you assume a different post--tranquil yet radiating assurance. Never show doubt, never lose your dignity beneath the crown, or it will not fit. It will seem to be destined for one more worthy. Do not wait for a coronation; the greatest emporers crown themselves.

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.

For the future, the motto is, "No days unalert."

Writers who have delved into human nature, ancient masters of strategy, historians of human stupidity and folly, kings and queens who have learned the hard way how to handle the burden of power - there knowledge is gathering dust, waiting for you to come and stand on their shoulders. Their wit can be your wit, their skill can be your skill, and they will never come around to tell people how unoriginal you really are. You can slog through life, make endless mistakes, wasting time and energy trying to do things from your own experience. Or you can use the armies of the past. As Bismarck once said, "Fools say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others' experience."

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. 

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

Animals behave in set patterns, which is why we are able to hunt and kill them. Only man has the capacity to consciously alter his behavior, to improvise and overcome the weight of routine and habit.

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.

Hangs in the uncertain balance of proud time.