#48 LAWS OF POWER LAW 9 HOW TO#

Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win once it slips, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life. At times it is easier to blend by playing the jester.ĥ.

Be careful with arousing suspicion or insecurity by being silent.

Be particularly careful with sarcasm - rarely is it valuable.

Generally saying less makes you appear more profound and mysterious.

Silence generally makes people uncomfortable - they will jump in and nervously fill the silence.

The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike.

When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control.

Often the key to deception is being bland and acting with humility.

Patterns will also help mask a deception.

A helpful or honest gesture can divert from a deception.

If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won’t catch on when you lead him into a trap. The bland exterior-like the unreadable poker face-is often the perfect smoke screen, hiding your intentions behind the comfortable and familiar.

Deception is always the best strategy, but the best deceptions require a screen of smoke to distract people attention from your real purpose.

II: Use smoke screens to disguise your actions:

Hide your intentions not by closing up, but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals - just false ones.

Unable to distinguish the genuine from the false, they cannot pick out your real goal. Use false sincerity, send ambiguous signals, set up misleading objects of desire. Do not give them the chance to sense what you are up to: Throw them off the scent by dragging red herrings across the path.

If at any point in the deception you practice people have the slightest suspicions to your intentions, all is lost.

I: Use decoyed objects of desire and red herrings to throw people off the scent: Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions.

It is better off to know who and where your opponents are than to not know where your real enemies lie.

Use enemies to define your cause more clearly to the public, even framing it as a struggle of good against evil.Whenever you can, bury the hatchet with an enemy, and make a point of putting him in your service.Keep friends for friendship, but work with the skilled and competent.

Friends often conceal things in order to avoid conflict this can be dangerous.

If you have no enemies, find a way to make them. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies.

But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove.

#48 LAWS OF POWER LAW 9 HOW TO#

Never put too much trust in friends, learn how to use enemies.īe wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power. In your desire to please and impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite-inspire fear and insecurity. Never outshine the master.Īlways make those above you feel comfortably superior.

48 laws of power law 9