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### Book:Robert Greene
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### Book:Joost Elffers
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### Book:PREFACE
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### Book:The feeling of having no power over people and events is generally
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### Book:unbearable to us—when we feel helpless we feel miserable. No one
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### Book:wants less power; everyone wants more. In the world today, however, it
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### Book:is dangerous to seem too power hungry, to be overt with your power
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### Book:moves. We have to seem fair and decent. So we need to be subtle—
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### Book:congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.
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### Book:This game of constant duplicity most resembles the power dynamic
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### Book:that existed in the scheming world of the old aristocratic court.
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### Book:Throughout history, a court has always formed itself around the person in
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### Book:power—king, queen, emperor, leader. The courtiers who filled this court
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### Book:were in an especially delicate position: They had to serve their masters,
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### Book:but if they seemed to fawn, if they curried favor too obviously, the other
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### Book:courtiers around them would notice and would act against them.
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### Book:Attempts to win the master’s favor, then, had to be subtle. And even
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### Book:skilled courtiers capable of such subtlety still had to protect themselves
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### Book:from their fellow courtiers, who at all moments were scheming to push
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### Book:them aside.
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### Book:Meanwhile the court was supposed to represent the height of
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### Book:civilization and refinement. Violent or overt power moves were frowned
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### Book:upon; courtiers would work silently and secretly against any among them
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### Book:who used force. This was the courtier’s dilemma: While appearing the
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### Book:very paragon of elegance, they had to outwit and thwart their own
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### Book:opponents in the subtlest of ways. The successful courtier learned over
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### Book:time to make all of his moves indirect; if he stabbed an opponent in the
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### Book:back, it was with a velvet glove on his hand and the sweetest of smiles
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### Book:on his face. Instead of using coercion or outright treachery, the perfect
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### Book:courtier got his way through seduction, charm, deception, and subtle
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### Book:strategy, always planning several moves ahead. Life in the court was a
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### Book:never-ending game that required constant vigilance and tactical thinking.
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### Book:It was civilized war.
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### Book:Today we face a peculiarly similar paradox to that of the courtier:
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### Book:Everything must appear civilized, decent, democratic, and fair. But if we
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### Book:play by those rules too strictly, if we take them too literally, we are
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### Book:crushed by those around us who are not so foolish. As the great
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### Book:Renaissance diplomat and courtier Niccolò Machiavelli wrote, “Anyman who
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### Book:tries to be good all the time is bound to come to ruin among the
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### Book:great number who are not good.” The court imagined itself the pinnacle
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### Book:of refinement, but underneath its glittering surface a cauldron of dark
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### Book:emotions—greed, envy, lust, hatred—boiled and simmered. Our world
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### Book:today similarly imagines itself the pinnacle of fairness, yet the same ugly
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### Book:emotions still stir within us, as they have forever. The game is the same.
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### Book:Outwardly, you must seem to respect the niceties, but inwardly, unless
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### Book:you are a fool, you learn quickly to be
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