Law 4: Always Say Less Than Necessary
When you are trying to impress, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Powerful individuals know when to speak and when to remain silent.
Law 5: So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard It with Your Life
Reputation is the cornerstone of power. With a solid reputation, you can intimidate and win; without it, you are vulnerable and will be attacked on all sides.
Law 6: Court Attention at All Costs
Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Make yourself a magnet for attention by appearing larger, more colorful, and more mysterious than the bland and timid masses.
Law 7: Get Others to Do the Work for You, but Always Take the Credit
Use the skills and efforts of others to further your own cause. Not only will this save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed.
Law 8: Make Other People Come to You – Use Bait if Necessary
When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always preferable to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process.
Law 9: Win Through Your Actions, Never Through Argument
Any momentary triumph you think you have gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: the resentment and ill will you stir up are stronger and last longer than any momentary change of opinion.
Law 10: Infection: Avoid the Unhappy and Unlucky
You can die from someone else’s misery—emotional states are as infectious as diseases. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.
Law 11: Learn to Keep People Dependent on You
To maintain your independence, you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied upon, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity, and you have nothing to fear.
Law 12: Use Selective Honesty and Generosity to Disarm Your Victim
One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. By giving a single act of honesty, you will lower people’s defenses and make them vulnerable to your manipulation.
Law 13: When Asking for Help, Appeal to People’s Self-Interest, Never to Their Mercy or Gratitude
If you need to turn to an ally for help, don’t remind them of your past assistance and good deeds. Instead, find something in your request that will benefit them and emphasize it.
Law 14: Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy
Knowing about your rival is critical. By posing as a friend, you can spy on them and gather valuable information.
Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally
All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out.
Law 16: Use Absence to Increase Respect and Honor
Too much circulation makes the price go down: The more you are seen and heard from, the more common you appear. If you are already established in a group, temporary withdrawal from it will make you more talked about, even more admired. You must learn when to leave. Create value through scarcity.
Law 17: Keep Others in Suspended Terror: Cultivate an Air of Unpredictability
Humans are creatures of habit with an insatiable need to see familiarity in other people’s actions. Your predictability gives them a sense of control. Turn the tables: Be deliberately unpredictable. Behavior that seems to have no consistency or purpose will keep them off-balance, and they will wear themselves out trying to explain your moves. Taken to an extreme, this strategy can intimidate and terrorize.
Law 18: Do Not Build Fortresses to Protect Yourself – Isolation is Dangerous
The world is dangerous and enemies are everywhere—everyone has to protect themselves. A fortress seems the safest. But isolation exposes you to more dangers than it protects you from: It cuts you off from valuable information, it makes you conspicuous and an easy target.
Law 19: Know Who You’re Dealing With – Do Not Offend the Wrong Person
There are many different kinds of people in the world, and you can never assume that everyone will react to your strategies in the same way. If you inadvertently offend the wrong person, they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge.
Law 20: Do Not Commit to Anyone
It is the fool who always rushes to take sides. Do not commit to any side or cause but yourself. By maintaining your independence, you become the master of others.
Law 21: Play a Sucker to Catch a Sucker – Seem Dumber Than Your Mark
No one likes feeling stupider than the next person. The trick, then, is to make your victims feel smart – and not just smart, but smarter than you are. Once convinced of this, they will never suspect that you may have ulterior motives.
Law 22: Use the Surrender Tactic: Transform Weakness into Power
When you are weaker, never fight for honor’s sake; choose surrender instead. Surrender gives you time to recover, time to torment and irritate your conqueror, time to wait for his power to wane.
Law 23: Concentrate Your Forces
Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point. You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper than by flitting from one shallow mine to another.
Law 24: Play the Perfect Courtier
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection; he flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner.
Law 25: Re-Create Yourself
Do not accept the roles that society foists on you. Re-create yourself by forging a new identity, one that commands attention and never bores the audience.
Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency: Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds. Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as scapegoats and cat’s-paws to disguise your involvement.
Law 27: Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cult-like Following
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow.
Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness
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.
Law 29: Plan All the Way to the End
The ending is everything. Plan all the way to it, taking into account all the possible consequences, obstacles, and twists of fortune that might reverse your hard work and give the glory to others.
Law 30: Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless
Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed.
Law 31: Control the Options: Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal
The best deceptions are the ones that seem to give the other person a choice: Your victims feel they are in control, but are actually your puppets.
Law 32: Play to People’s Fantasies
The truth is often avoided because it is ugly and unpleasant. Never appeal to truth and reality unless you are prepared for the anger that comes from disenchantment.
Law 33: Discover Each Man’s Thumbscrew
Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usually an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure.
Law 34: Be Royal in Your Own Fashion: Act Like a King to Be Treated Like One
The way you carry yourself will often determine how you are treated: In the long run, appearing vulgar or common will make people disrespect you.
Law 35: Master the Art of Timing
Never seem to be in a hurry—hurrying betrays a lack of control over yourself and over time. Always seem patient, as if you know that everything will come to you eventually.
Law 36: Disdain Things You Cannot Have: Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge
By acknowledging a petty problem, you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him.
Law 37: Create Compelling Spectacles
Striking imagery and grand symbolic gestures create the aura of power—everyone responds to them. Stage spectacles for those around you, then, full of arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presence.
Law 38: Think as You Like but Behave Like Others
If you make a show of going against the times, flaunting your unconventional ideas and unorthodox ways, people will think that you only want attention and that you look down upon them.
Law 39: Stir Up Waters to Catch Fish
Anger and emotion are strategically counterproductive. You must always stay calm and objective. But if you can make your enemies angry while staying calm yourself, you gain a decided advantage.
Law 40: Despise the Free Lunch
What is offered for free is dangerous—it usually involves a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for.
Law 41: Avoid Stepping Into a Great Man’s Shoes
What happens first always appears better and more original than what comes after. If you succeed a great man or have a famous parent, you will have to accomplish double their achievements to outshine them. Do not get lost in their shadow, or stuck in a past not of your making: Establish your own name and identity by changing course. Slay the overbearing father, disparage his legacy, and gain power by shining in your own way.
Law 42: Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep Will Scatter
Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual—the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoner of goodwill. If you allow such people room to operate, others will succumb to their influence. Do not wait for the troubles they cause to multiply, do not try to negotiate with them—they are irredeemable. Neutralize their influence by isolating or banishing them. Strike at the source of the trouble and the sheep will scatter.
Law 43: Work on the Hearts and Minds of Others
Coercion creates a reaction that will eventually work against you. You must seduce others into wanting to move in your direction. A person you have seduced becomes your loyal pawn. And the way to seduce others is to operate on their individual psychologies and weaknesses. Soften up the resistant by working on their emotions, playing on what they hold dear and what they fear. Ignore the hearts and minds of others and they will grow to hate you.
Law 44: Disarm and Infuriate with the Mirror Effect
The mirror reflects reality, but it is also the perfect tool for deception: When you mirror your enemies, doing exactly as they do, they cannot figure out your strategy. The Mirror Effect mocks and humiliates them, making them overreact. By holding up a mirror to their psyches, you seduce them with the illusion that you share their values; by holding up a mirror to their actions, you teach them a lesson. Few can resist the power of the Mirror Effect.
Law 45: Preach the Need for Change, but Never Reform Too Much at Once
Everyone understands the need for change in the abstract, but on the day-to-day level people are creatures of habit. Too much innovation is traumatic, and will lead to revolt. If you are new to a position of power, or an outsider trying to build a power base, make a show of respecting the old way of doing things. If change is necessary, make it feel like a gentle improvement on the past.
Law 46: Never Appear Too Perfect
Appearing better than others is always dangerous, but most dangerous of all is to appear to have no faults or weaknesses. Envy creates silent enemies. It is smart to occasionally display defects, and admit to harmless vices, in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approachable. Only gods and the dead can seem perfect with impunity.
Law 47: Do Not Go Past the Mark You Aimed For; In Victory, Learn When to Stop
The moment of victory is often the moment of greatest peril. In the heat of victory, arrogance and overconfidence can push you past the goal you had aimed for, and by going too far, you make more enemies than you defeat. Do not allow success to go to your head. There is no substitute for strategy and careful planning. Set a goal, and when you reach it, stop.
Law 48: Assume Formlessness
By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.
