Image via Wikipedia

Once you reached the age of reason, the society would teach you how to cheat, fight, deceive, and advance your cause.  From the world’s greatest sages like Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Carl von Clausewitz, this book Joost Elffers’ 48 Laws of Power is the summarized and compact details for you to live in this modern world.  It is the survival of the fittest.  Some people attained power but lost not by ignorance but by arroagance.  Therefore, that is a fatal mistake.  This book would teach you to reach your dreams by making the right moves.

Image via Wikipedia

For your information, I do not agree with the hypocrites who tells that the wisdom of Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Carl von Clausewitz is barbaric and sadist. I believe that we are living in a modern world which is likely to be compared to a jungle.  And, we can also distiguish the difference between the prey and predators.  Sometimes, we can also identify who among us are snakes and sly foxes.

Image via Wikipedia

The 48 Concise Principles of Power:

1. People with power know how to humble themselves.  They never outshine their masters.
2. People with power learn how to use enemies and never trust easily in their friends.
3. People with power conceal their intentions. They are asking favors from others that would also benefit these people.
4. People with power know when to shut their mouth.  They always say less than necessary.
5. People with power guard their reputation with their life.
6. People with power are magnet of attention.  They appear larger, more exciting, and more mysterious.
7. People with power know how to get others do their work but always take the credit.
8. People with power  do not come to their people.  Their people come to them.
9. People with power win through their actions not in arguments.
10. People with power avoid the infectious people such as unhappy and unlucky ones.
11. Their people depend on them.  They do not depend on their people.
12. People with power use selective honesty and generosity to gain favors from others.
13. When they are asking for favors, they appeal to others’ self-interest not by mercy or gratitude.
14. People with power pose as a friend and work as a spy.
15. People with power crush their enemy to DEATH!
16. People with power use their absence to increase respect and honor.
17. People with power keep their enemies in suspended terror by cultivating their presence of unpredictability.
18. People with power do not isolate themselves from the society even though they are hurt.
19. People with power know first the people they are dealing with.  That is how skeptic they are!
20. People with power do not commit to anyone.
21. People with power usually play ignorant to catch the idiot.
22. People with power transform their weakness to power as their tactic.
23. People with power concentrate their forces and energies by focusing on their strongest point.
24. People with power master the art of indirection.  They know how to flatter, yield to their superiors, and assert power over others in the most graceful manner.
25. People with power recreate themselves.  Their minds are renewed by new perspective and aura.
26. People with power always keep their hands clean.  Their people do the dirty job.
27. People with power play on people’s need to believe so they can create a cult-like following.
28. People with power usually enter action with boldness.
29. People with power plan things all the way to the end.
30. People with power make their accomplishment seem effortless.
31. People with power always get others to play the cards they deal.
32. People with power loved to play on people’s imaginations and fantasies.
33. People with power are keen in discerning in each man’s weaknesses.
34. People with power act like a king so they are treated like one.
35. People with power know how to master the art of timing.
36. Their best revenge is to keep silence and let the spectators watch the cranky jesters.
37. Their people respond to them by their dazzling appearance.
38. People with power think as they want but they behave like others.  Idealism is a very harmful disease.
39. People with power usually put their enemies to shame.  Their enemies are ending up like morons by their  angers and emotions.
40. People with power despise free gifts.  What is offered free is dangerous because its worth more than the full price.
41. People with power do not follow their old men’s legacy.  They create their own era.
42. People with power do not play the Chinese game of chess.  They strike the king first, then the followers will scatter.
43. People with power usually work on the minds and hearts of others.  The minds and hearts have keyholes.  They have the key to open that door.
44. People with power apply the Mirror Effect to their enemies to using their values and psyches to mock and humiliate them.
45. People with power know how to respect old traditions.  Too much innovations is very traumatic.  It will lead to rebellion.
46. People with power display imperfections in order to deflect envy and appear more human and approach.
47. People with power know when to stop.  They set a goal, and follow it.  When they reached it, they stop.  They do not allow success or victory run in their head.
48. People with power adapt to their circumstances.  They ignore the advice that meddle their ways.  They throw the idiot’s doctrines that tell them what to do.