The 48 Laws of Power

In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.

Be wary of friends-they will betray you more quickly, for they are easily aroused to envy. They also become spoiled and tyrannical. But hire a former enemy and he will be more loyal than a friend, because he has more to prove. In fact, you have more to fear from friends than from enemies. If you have no enemies, find a way to make them.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelope them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late.

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

Reputation is the cornerstone of power. Through reputation alone you can intimidate and win; once you slip, however, you are vulnerable, and will be attacked on all sides. Make your reputation unassailable. Always be alert to potential attacks and thwart them before they happen. Meanwhile, learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

Everything is judged by its appearance; what is unseen counts for nothing. Never let yourself get lost in the crowd, then, or buried in oblivion. Stand out. Be conspicuous, at all cost. Make yourself a magnet of attention by appearing larger, more colorful, more mysterious, than the bland and timid masses.

Use the wisdom, knowledge, and legwork of other people to further your own cause. Not only will such assistance save you valuable time and energy, it will give you a godlike aura of efficiency and speed. In the end your helpers will be forgotten and you will be remembered. Never do yourself what others can do for you.

When you force the other person to act, you are the one in control. It is always better to make your opponent come to you, abandoning his own plans in the process. Lure him with fabulous gains – then attack. You hold the cards.

Any momentary triumph you think gained through argument is really a Pyrrhic victory: The resentment and ill will you stir up is stronger and lasts longer than any momentary change of opinion. It is much more powerful to get others to agree with you through your actions, without saying a word. Demonstrate, do not explicate.

You can die from someone else’s misery – emotional states are as infectious as disease. You may feel you are helping the drowning man but you are only precipitating your own disaster. The unfortunate sometimes draw misfortune on themselves; they will also draw it on you. Associate with the happy and fortunate instead.

To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have. Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear. Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift – a Trojan horse – will serve the same purpose.

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, do not bother to remind him of your past assistance and good deeds. He will find a way to ignore you. Instead, uncover something in your request, or in your alliance with him, that will benefit him, and emphasize it out of all proportion. He will respond enthusiastically when he sees something to be gained for himself.

Knowing about your rival is critical. Use spies to gather valuable information that will keep you a step ahead. Better still: Play the spy yourself. In polite social encounters, learn to probe. Ask indirect questions to get people to reveal their weaknesses and intentions. There is no occasion that is not an opportunity for artful spying.

All great leaders since Moses have known that a feared enemy must be crushed completely. (Sometimes they have learned this the hard way.) If one ember is left alight, no matter how dimly it smolders, a fire will eventually break out. More is lost through stopping halfway than through total annihilation: The enemy will recover, and will seek revenge. Crush him, not only in body but in spirit.

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.

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.

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. Better to circulate among people find allies, mingle. You are shielded from your enemies by the crowd.

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. Deceive or outmaneuver some people and they will spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. They are wolves in lambs’ clothing. Choose your victims and opponents carefully, then – never offend or deceive the wrong person.

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 – playing people against one another, making them pursue you.

No one likes feeling stupider than the next persons. The trick, 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.

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. Do not give him the satisfaction of fighting and defeating you – surrender first. By turning the other check you infuriate and unsettle him. Make surrender a tool of power.

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 – intensity defeats extensity every time. When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow who will give you milk for a long time to come.

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 mot oblique and graceful manner. Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.

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. Be the master of your own image rather than letting others define if for you. Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions – your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.

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.

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. Keep your words vague but full of promise; emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking. Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf. In the absence of organized religion and grand causes, your new belief system will bring you untold power.

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. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with more audacity. Everyone admires the bold; no one honors the timid.

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. By planning to the end you will not be overwhelmed by circumstances and you will know when to stop. Gently guide fortune and help determine the future by thinking far ahead.

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. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more. Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work – it only raises questions. Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

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. Give people options that come out in your favor whichever one they choose. Force them to make choices between the lesser of two evils, both of which serve your purpose. Put them on the horns of a dilemma: They are gored wherever they turn.

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 for disenchantment. Life is so harsh and distressing that people who can manufacture romance or conjure up fantasy are like oases in the desert: Everyone flocks to them. There is great power in tapping into the fantasies of the masses.

Everyone has a weakness, a gap in the castle wall. That weakness is usual y an insecurity, an uncontrollable emotion or need; it can also be a small secret pleasure. Either way, once found, it is a thumbscrew you can turn to your advantage.

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. For a king respects himself and inspires the same sentiment in others. By acting regally and confident of your powers, you make yourself seem destined to wear a crown.

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. Become a detective of the right moment; sniff out the spirit of the times, the trends that will carry you to power. Learn to stand back when the time is not yet ripe, and to strike fiercely when it has reached fruition.

By acknowledging a petty problem you give it existence and credibility. The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him; and a small mistake is often made worse and more visible when you try to fix it. It is sometimes best to leave things alone. If there is something you want but cannot have, show contempt for it. The less interest you reveal, the more superior you seem.

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. Dazzled by appearances, no one will notice what you are really doing.

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. They will find a way to punish you for making them feel inferior. It is far safer to blend in and nurture the common touch. Share your originality only with tolerant friends and those who are sure to appreciate your uniqueness.

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. Put your enemies off-balance: Find the chink in their vanity through which you can rattle them and you hold the strings.

What is offered for free is dangerous – it usually involves either a trick or a hidden obligation. What has worth is worth paying for. By paying your own way you stay clear of gratitude, guilt, and deceit. It is also often wise to pay the full price – there is no cutting corners with excellence. Be lavish with your money and keep it circulating, for generosity is a sign and a magnet for power.

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 own 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.

Strike the Shepherd and the Sheep will Scatter Trouble can often be traced to a single strong individual – the stirrer, the arrogant underling, the poisoned 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.

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.

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 Mirror Effect.

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.

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.

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.

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.

1. Once you have their money, you never give it back.[2][3]
2. The best deal is the one that brings the most profit.[4]
3. Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.[5]
4. A woman wearing clothes is like a man in the kitchen.[4]
6. Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.[2] or Never allow family to stand in the way of profit.[6]
7. Keep your ears open.[7]
8. Small print leads to large risk.[8]
9. Opportunity plus instinct equals profit.[9]
10. Greed is eternal.[10][11]
11. Even if it’s free, you can always buy it cheaper.[4]
12. Anything worth selling is worth selling twice.[4]
13. Anything worth doing is worth doing for money.[8]
16. A deal is a deal.[12]
17. A contract is a contract is a contract. But only between Ferengi.[13]
18. A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all.[3]
19. Satisfaction is not guaranteed.[8]
21. Never place friendship above profit.[14]
22. A wise man can hear profit in the wind.[14]
23. Nothing is more important than your health. Except for your money.[6]
27. There is nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman.[8]
31. Never make fun of a Ferengi’s mother[15]...Insult something he cares about instead[8].
33. It never hurts to suck up to the boss.[14][16]
34. War is good for business.[17][18]
35. Peace is good for business.[17][19]
40. She can touch your lobes, but never your latinum.[8]
41. Profit is its own reward.[8]
44. Never confuse wisdom with luck.[8]
45. Expand or die.[6] (The 95th rule is also given as “Expand or die” on one occasion.)[11]
47. Never trust a man wearing a better suit than your own.[20]
48. The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.[14]
50. Never bluff a Klingon.[14]
52. Never ask when you can take.[8]
57. Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them.[21]
58. There is no substitute for success.[8]
59. Free advice is seldom cheap.[14]
60. Keep your lies consistent.[8]
62. The riskier the road, the greater the profit.[14]
65. Win or lose, there’s always Hupyrian beetle snuff.[8]
74. Knowledge equals profit.[22]
75. Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum.[23]
76. Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies![24]
79. Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge.[8]
82. The flimsier the product, the higher the price.[8]
85. Never let the competition know what you’re thinking.[8]
89. Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits.[8]
94. Females and finances don’t mix.[25]
95. Expand or die.[11]. (The 45th rule was also given as “Expand or die” on one occasion.)[6]
98. Every man has his price.[26]
99. Trust is the biggest liability of all.[8]
102. Nature decays, but latinum is forever.[27]
103. Sleep can interfere with... [cut off]. (The rest of the 103rd rule was never stated onscreen as Pel was interrupted before finishing.)[14]
104. Faith moves mountains... of inventory.[8]
106. There is no honor in poverty.[8]
109. Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack.[20]
111. Treat people in your debt like family. Exploit them.[28][29]
112. Never have sex with the boss’s sister.[30]
113. Never have sex with the boss’s daughter.[30]
114. Never have sex with the boss’s wife.[30]
115. Always have sex with the boss.[8]
121. Everything is for sale, even friendship.[8]
123. Even a blind man can recognize the glow of latinum.[8]
125. You can’t make a deal if you’re dead.[18]
139. Wives serve, brothers inherit.[31]
141. Only fools pay retail.[8]
144. There’s nothing wrong with charity... as long as it winds up in your pocket.[8]
162. Even in the worst of times, someone turns a profit.[8]
168. Whisper your way to success.[32]
177. Know your enemies... but do business with them always.[8]
181. Not even dishonesty can tarnish the shine of profit.[8]
189. Let others keep their reputation. You keep their money.[8]
190. Hear all; trust nothing.[33]
192. Never cheat a Klingon... unless you’re sure you can get away with it.[8]
194. It’s always good business to know about your customers before they walk in your door.[34]
202. The justification of profit is profit.[8]
203. New customers are like razor-toothed Greeworms. They can be succulent, but sometimes they bite back.[35]
208. Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than the question is an answer.[25]
211. Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don’t hesitate to step on them.[36]
214. Never begin a business negotiation on an empty stomach.[37]
217. You can’t free a fish from water.[28]
218. Always know what you’re buying.[8]
223. Beware the man who doesn’t make time for oo-mox.[8]
229. Latinum lasts longer than lust.[25]
236. You can’t buy fate.[8]
239. Never be afraid to mislabel a product.[13]
242. More is good... all is better.[8]
255. A wife is a luxury... a smart accountant, a necessity.[8]
261. A wealthy man can afford anything except a conscience.[8]
263. Never allow doubt to tarnish your lust for latinum.[36]
266. When in doubt, lie.[8]
284. Deep down, everyone’s a Ferengi.[8]
285. No good deed ever goes unpunished.[38]

Ah! The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition!

How evil would I be if I said a couple of 'em actually make sense?

#3 Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.
#7 Keep your ears open.
#22 A wise man can hear profit in the wind.
#47 Never trust a man wearing a better suit than your own.
#48 The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife.
#59 Free advice is seldom cheap.
#62 The riskier the road, the greater the profit.
#74 Knowledge equals profit.
#112 Never have sex with the boss's sister.
#125 You can't make a deal if you're dead.
#190 Hear all, trust nothing.
#194 It's always good to know about new customers before they walk in your door.
#208 Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a question is an answer.
#214 Never begin a negotiation on an empty stomach.
#217 You can't free a fish from water.

Maybe that's more than a "couple".

"The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office."

"Unquestionably, there is progress. The average American now pays out twice as much in taxes as he formerly got in wages."

"Misogynist: A man who hates women as much as women hate one another."~H. L. Mencken

"The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved."~Confucius

"Before all else, be armed. For among other evils caused by being disarmed, it renders you contemptible; which is one of those disgraceful things which a prince must guard against."

"If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared."

"Severities should be dealt out all at once, so that their suddenness may give less offense; benefits ought to be handed ought drop by drop, so that they may be relished the more."

"There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt." ~Niccolo Machiavelli

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