

You can use this book to learn about power in general, or study and reflect deeply upon the ideas to truly understand people and the world you live in. Greene encourages us to think of power-play as a game. In fact, there’s much that we can learn from the masterful scheming of the aristocratic courts of the past-those who can subtly charm, deceive and manipulate without others’ awareness can rise to power without others’ resentment or resistance.
#What are 48 laws of power how to#
You can choose how to use power once you have it, but it’d be foolish to dismiss power as bad or unimportant. It’s important to realize that power is amoral-it’s neither good nor evil. No one likes being powerless, yet we don’t take well to power-hungry people due to our modern ideologies of fairness, equity etc. For more details, do get our complete book summary bundle in text, infographic and audio formats.
#What are 48 laws of power free#
In this free summary, we’ll briefly outline the 48 laws of power.

In “The 48 Laws of Power”, Robert Greene distills 3,000 years of history into 48 laws to help us understand how we can masterfully acquire power and avoid being manipulated or crushed by others. This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia ( view authors).Power is an integral part of our societies and lives.

Infection: avoid the unhappy and unlucky.Win through your actions, never through argument.Make other people come to you use bait if necessary.Get others to do the work for you, but always take the credit.So Much Depends on Reputation – Guard it with your Life.Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.Each law is its own chapter, complete with sub-sections entitled "transgression of the law," "observation of the law," and "reversal." Reversals detail how the laws can be misunderstood or taken to excess, to the detriment of the person seeking to observe them. The book is intended to show people how to gain power, preserve it, and defend themselves against power manipulators.

"The 48 Laws of Power" are a distillation of 3,000 years of the history of power, drawing on the lives of strategists and historical figures like Niccolò Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, Queen Elizabeth I, Henry Kissinger, P.T. However, at the time Greene was rereading his favorite biography about Julius Caesar and took inspiration from Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon River and fight Pompey, thus inciting the Roman Civil War. In 1995, Greene worked as a writer at Fabrica, an art and media school, and met a book packager named Joost Elffers.Īlthough Greene was unhappy in his current job, he was comfortable and saw the time needed to write a proper book proposal as too risky. Greene initially formulated some of the ideas in "The 48 Laws of Power" while working as a writer in Hollywood and observing that today's power elite shared similar traits with powerful figures throughout history. "The 48 Laws of Power" (1998) is the first book by American author Robert Greene.
