The 48 Laws of Power

Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

Strangely enough, it is your act of kindness tiiat unbalances everything.

Friends often agree on tilings in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. They laugh extra hard at each odier's jokes. Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels. Friends will say that they love your poetry, adore your music, envy your taste in clothesmaybe they mean it, often they do not.

Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure. Tacitus, c. a.d. 55-120

Reputation is the cornerstone of power.

Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do not do, what you do not allow yourself to get dragged into.

Any man who tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the great number who are not good. Hence a prince who wants to keep his authority must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or refrain from using it, as necessity requires.

The Prince, Niccolb Machiavelli, 1469-1527

nation.

Honore de Balzac, 1799-1850

I thought to myself

with what means, with

what deceptions, with

how many varied arts,

with what industry a

man sharpens his wits

to deceive another,

and through these

variations the world is

made more beautiful

Francesco Vettori,

contemporary and

friend of

Machiavelli,

early sixteenth

CENTURY

There are no principles; there are only events. There is no good and bad, there are only circumstances. The superior man espouses events and circumstances in order to guide them. If there were principles and fixed laws, nations would not change them as we change our shirts and a man can not be expected to be wiser than an entire nation