48 Laws of Power

48. Assume Formlessness
By being tangible, you open yourself up to attack. To be malleable, adaptable, and on the move makes you ungraspable. Accept that everything, everywhere changes, and embody this truth. By being as fluid as water, you protect yourself from the ever-shifting nature of reality. By refusing to adapt and to change, you fail to evolve and your power will be usurped. The powerful are constantly adapting, and their power comes from the speed at which they can change.

47. Don’t Go Past the Mark You Aimed For: In Victory, Learn When to Stop
Don’t let success go to your head. The moment you achieve victory is often when you’re at your most vulnerable. Don’t get ahead of yourself with your overconfidence and push beyond your initial target. This could create more enemies than you are capable of defeating. There can be no substitute for meticulous strategic planning. Once you reach your goal, stop.

46. Never Appear Too Perfect
While appearing superior to others is dangerous, to appear faultless and without weakness is even more perilous. By displaying harmless vices, you prevent envy from developing, and you make yourself appear more approachable. By letting envy fester, it can manifest in a host of problematic ways that will ultimately try to rob you of your power. Stop it in its tracks by making yourself seem powerful but not faultless.

45. Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform Too Much at Once
If you have recently entered a position of power or are an outsider trying to make a claim for it, respect the way people have been living up until this point. Too much change will engender a revolt. To introduce change, make it seem like a gradual and gentle improvement on the past.

44. Disarm and Infuriate With the Mirror Effect
By mirroring your opponents and doing exactly as they do, you humiliate them and cause them to overreact. By making them believe you share their values, they find it challenging to work out your strategy, as they are blinded by your mirror. You are also able to teach your opponents a lesson by giving them a taste of their own medicine.

43. Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others

If people feel coerced into acting in a specific way, they will resent you. Instead, you must seduce others so that they act how you want without you having to ask them. By understanding their psychology and their weaknesses, you can play with their emotions and conquer their hearts and minds so that they are loyal to you. By softening them up, you can slowly bend people towards your will without them realizing.

27. Create a Cult-like Following by Playing on People’s Need to Believe
People want to believe in something. By inventing yourself as this cult-like entity, they will follow you and give you untold amounts of power. To become such a figure, you need to follow these steps:

– Keep your words vague and simple but full of promise

– Emphasize enthusiasm rather than the intellectual and the rational

– Structure your group in accordance to the forms of organized religion

– Disguise your sources of income

– Create an us-versus-them dynamic

33. Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Find your opponent’s weakness. This is often an insecurity, an untamed emotion or desire, or sometimes a secret pleasure. To do so, look for the following:

– Instances when they behave like a child, which indicates some unresolved trauma in childhood

– Contrasts, as an overt trait often conceals it opposite (i.e., arrogance is often hiding insecurity)

– The weak link, which is often someone behind the scenes controlling their behavior

– Ways to fill the void of their insecurity or unhappiness to wield significant power

– How to encourage their uncontrollable emotion, as they won’t be able to control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them

26. Keep Your Hands Clean
You must maintain a spotless appearance. You should never be associated with nasty deeds. To do this, employ the use of scapegoats to disguise your involvement. Your reputation depends more on what you conceal than what you reveal. You should always have a convenient scapegoat on hand for when needing to conceal your more dubious activities.

In addition to a scapegoat, you will also need a cat’s-paw. This is someone who does your dirty work for you while obscuring your involvement. This means letting someone else be the bearer of bad news while you choose to associate yourself exclusively with the good.

28. Enter Action With Boldness
Everyone admires the bold. The timid are frowned upon. Consequently, you shouldn’t choose a course of action half-heartedly. Your doubts will become apparent and will tarnish your reputation. It’s always better to act boldly. Any mistakes made are easily compensated by acting even more audaciously.

Few are born bold. It’s a habit that needs to be cultivated. It must be practiced. Likewise, timidity is also a learned trait. If you find yourself acting timidly, you must root this out and replace it with acts of boldness instead.

30. Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless

Make your success seem easy. Conceal all the toil and tricks you used to attain it, as it otherwise arouses too much curiosity in others. Never reveal how you reached your position of power to anyone, or they may use it against you. There are great advantages to remaining silent. The more mysterious your actions appear, the greater your power appears to be. It will make it seem as if you have an exclusive gift that no one can replicate and that knows no limits.

42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter
All trouble can usually be traced back to one individual. By rooting out this individual and preventing them from operating, you will stop their influence. Don’t waste time, or their influence will multiply. In every group, power is concentrated around one or two people. Consequently, understanding who controls the group is critical. This is made more challenging, as troublemakers prefer to disguise their actions. Isolate their power, however, and they become redundant.

31. Control the Options: Get Others to Play With the Cards You Deal
By giving your opponents a choice, they will feel that they’re controlling their destiny. What they won’t realize is that you’re using them as a puppet to choose between two scenarios, both of which serve you.

When given a choice between two possibilities, people rarely consider all the other potential options that could be on the table. Instead, they blindly choose to believe they have autonomy in their decision-making; too much freedom creates anxiety. By setting up a narrow range of choices, you can guide your opponent to play right into your hands.

36. Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge

The less interest you take in things that irritate you, the more superior you seem. By acknowledging your enemy, you give their existence credibility and, therefore, power. Paradoxically, the more you want something, the more it eludes you as your interest is too strong, which makes others feel uncomfortable and fearful. Occasionally, it’s best just to leave things alone. By turning your back on what you want, you will drive your opponents crazy.

42. Strike the Shepherd, and the Sheep Will Scatter
All trouble can usually be traced back to one individual. By rooting out this individual and preventing them from operating, you will stop their influence. Don’t waste time, or their influence will multiply. In every group, power is concentrated around one or two people. Consequently, understanding who controls the group is critical. This is made more challenging, as troublemakers prefer to disguise their actions. Isolate their power, however, and they become redundant.

41. Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes
What came first always seems more original than what follows. Don’t get lost in the shadows of those that came before you. You must establish your own name and identity by not following the same course of your predecessors.

40. Despise the Free Lunch

Never trust anything that comes for free. Anything of worth is worth paying for. Most things that come for free come with a burdensome psychological price task. By paying, you avoid falling into the trap of having to be grateful, guilty, or deceitful. Further, being lavish with your money is a sign of power. Generosity softens up your opponents into being deceived.

39. Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish
If you can stay calm while infuriating your opponents, you can gain an advantage. By finding their weaknesses, you can disturb them and play with them at will. The more angry they become, the more ridiculous they will appear. This will reduce their power.

38. Think as You Like, but Behave Like Others
By consistently going against the grain in public, people will begin to resent you for making them feel inferior. Practice blending in and hiding your true feelings to nurture the common touch. By doing so, you will be left alone to express your true beliefs in a targeted manner. Once a base of power is established, you can then begin to disseminate your beliefs gradually, and they are more likely to be adopted.