The HIME TM* Way to Read *High-Impact, Minimal-Effort The 48 Laws of Power (Part 3: Laws 25 to 36) By Robert Greene Inside are lessons from Robert Greene s The 48 Laws of Power as seperate print-ready posters. Simpleology
Law 25: Recreate Yourself Julius Caesar understood the vital link between power and theater. He made himself an actor and director on the world stage. He spoke his lines as if they had been scripted. He moved through crowds with a constant sense of how he appeared to his audience. He built drama into his speeches, and built staging into his public appearances.
Law 26: Keep Your Hands Clean For several years, Cesare Borgia campaigned to gain control of large areas of Italy in the name of Pope Alexander. In the year 1500, he managed to take Romagna in northern Italy. For years, the region had been ruled by greedy masters who plundered its wealth. To establish order, Cesare appointed a lieutenant general of the region, Remirro de Orco, and gave him absolute powers. With violence, de Orco established a severe, brutal justice in Romagna. But he went too far, and soon the local population hated him. In December of 1502, Cesare let it be known that he had not approved of de Orco s cruel and violent deeds, and ordered him executed.
Law 27: Play on People s Need to Believe to Create a Cult Like Following In 1788, the scientist Franz Mesmer was a pioneer in the study of animal magnetism (the belief that animals contain magnetic matter). However, his theories were met with scorn and ridicule. So, he decided to move to Paris and start again. Renting a splendid apartment in his new city, Mesmer decorated it lavishly. The doctor advertised that in his apartment he would give demonstrations of the powers of animal magnetism. He invited the diseased and melancholic to feel its powers. Soon Parisians of all classes were paying to witness Mesmer s miracles.
Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness On his deathbed in 1533, Vasily III proclaimed his three-year-old son, Ivan IV, as his successor. However, the Shuisky princes seized control of the government. At the age of eight, Ivan was a despised orphan, and roamed the palace, hungry, ill clothed, and often in hiding from the Shuiskys. But in 1543 he asked Prince Andrei Shuisky to come to his room. When the prince arrived, the room was filled with palace guards. Young Ivan then pointed his finger at Andrei and ordered him killed. Over the next few days Ivan had all of Andrei s close associates arrested and banished. Caught off-guard by his sudden boldness, all now stood in mortal terror of this youth, the future Ivan the Terrible, who had planned and waited for five years to execute this one swift and bold act.
Law 29: Plan All the Way to the End In 1863 the Prussian premier Otto von Bismarck surveyed the chessboard of European power as it then stood. Austria, the dominant member of the Federation, made sure that the other German states remained weak and submissive. Bismarck believed that Prussia was destined for something far greater than a servant to Austria. A year later Bismarck founded the German Empire, with the Prussian king as the newly crowned emperor and Bismarck himself a prince. For the rest of his life he struggled to maintain peace in Europe and to prevent any further wars. Everybody assumed he had changed, mellowing with the years. They had failed to understand: This was the final move of his original plan.
Law 30: Make Your Accomplishments Seem Effortless In 1904, an audience of 4,000 Londoners filled a theater to watch Houdini escape from the strongest manacles ever invented. The crowd watched as experts secured the manacles on Houdini s wrists. Then the escape artist entered a black cabinet on stage. Finally, Houdini emerged from the cabinet with his hands free, the manacles raised high in triumph. Although he had taken an hour to free himself, he showed no signs of doubt to the audience.
Law 31: Control the Options Get Others to Play with the Cards You Deal The German Chancellor Bismarck was enraged at the constant criticisms from Rudolf Virchow (the German pathologist and liberal politician). So, had his servant call upon the scientist to challenge him to a duel. As the challenged party, I have the choice of weapons, said Virchow, and I choose these. He held up two large, identical sausages. One of these, he went on, is infected with deadly germs; the other is perfectly sound. Let His Excellency decide which one he wishes to eat, and I will eat the other. Almost immediately, the message came back that the chancellor had decided to cancel the duel.
Law 32: Play to People s Fantasies In the early 1700s, London was abuzz with talk of a mysterious stranger, a young man named George Psalmanazar. He had arrived from the island of Formosa (now Taiwan), off the coast of China. Oxford University engaged Psalmanazar to teach the island s language. A few years later he translated the Bible into Formosan, then wrote a book on Formosa s history and geography. English royalty wined and dined the young man. Everywhere he went he entertained his hosts with wondrous stories of his homeland, and its bizarre customs. After Psalmanazar died, however, his will revealed that he was in fact merely a Frenchman with a rich imagination. He had invented everything he had ever said about Formosa.
Law 33: Discover Each Man s Thumbscrew In the year 1559, the French king Henri II died in a jousting exhibition. His widow, Catherine, took control of the country as regent to her next son. The main threats to the queen s power were Antoine de Bourbon, king of Navarre, and his brother, Louis, the powerful prince of Conde. Antoine had a notorious weakness for young women, so she assigned one of her most attractive maids to seduce him. Now Antoine s lover, the maid reported all of his actions to Catherine. The move worked so well that Catherine assigned another of her maids to Prince Conde.
Law 34: Be Royal in Your Own Fashion Act Like a King to be Treated Like One When Christopher Columbus was trying to find funding for his legendary voyages, many around him believed he came from the Italian aristocracy. But it was nothing more than fantasy. Columbus was actually the son of a humble weaver. Columbus himself had created the myth of his noble background by acting as if he were descended from noble parents. Eventually he was granted a meeting with the king of Portugal, whom he petitioned to finance a voyage aimed at discovering a shorter route to Asia. In return for announcing that any discoveries he achieved would be made in the king s name, Columbus wanted the title Grand Admiral of the Oceanic Sea. Unknown to the King, Columbus knew almost nothing about navigation, could not work a quadrant, and had never led a group of men.
Law 35: Master the Art of Timing The sultan of Persia had sentenced two men to death. One of them, knowing how much the sultan loved his stallion, offered to teach the horse to fly within a year in return for his life. The sultan, fancying himself as the rider of the only flying horse in the world, agreed. The other prisoner looked at his friend in disbelief You know horses don t fly. What made you come up with a crazy idea like that? You re only postponing the inevitable. Not so, said the first prisoner. I have actually given myself four chances for freedom. First, the sultan might die during the year. Second, I might die. Third, the horse might die. And fourth... I might teach the horse to fly!
Law 36: Disdain Things You Cannot Have, Ignoring Them is the Best Revenge In 1527, King Henry VIII of England decided he had to be rid of his wife, Catherine of Aragon, after she failed to produce a son. His marriage had to be annulled. For this, however, Henry had to apply to the Vatican. But Pope Clement would not annul the marriage. Henry had his own strategy: He insisted that his marriage to Catherine had been dissolved, and in 1533 he married Anne Boleyn. Clement refused to recognize the marriage, but Henry did not care. He no longer recognized the pope s authority, and proceeded to break with the Roman Catholic Church, establishing the Church of England. The pope tried many threats, but nothing worked. Henry simply ignored him. Henry had humiliated him and he had no power of recourse.