Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.
Interpretation
Deceivers often use apparent honesty to mask their true intentions and dishonesty.
This quote from Robert Greene highlights the complex nature of deceit. It suggests that the most skilled deceivers intentionally create a facade of honesty in one area of their lives as a strategic way to hide their dishonest behaviors in other areas. By employing honesty as a mere tactic or decoy, they manipulate perceptions and gain trust, all while concealing their true motives.
In practice
In a discussion about the nature of trust in relationships, this quote can serve as a cautionary reminder.
In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest. Be both masculine and feminine, impudent and charming, subtle and outrageous. Let other people worry about being socially acceptable; those types are a dime a dozen, and you are after a power greater than they can imagine.
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.
The moment people feel they know what to expect from you, your spell on them is broken. More: You have ceded them power.
The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.
The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don't be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.
Only create associations with positive affinities. Make this a rule of life and you will benefit more than from all the therapy in the world.
I suppose every one must have reflected how primeval and how poetical are the things that one carries in one's pocket; the pocket-knife, for instance, the type of all human tools, the infant of the sword. Once I planned to write a book of poems entirely about things in my pockets. But I found it would be too long; and the age of the great epics is past.
Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.
There is still much debate about whether torture has been effective in eliciting information - the assumption being, apparently, that if it is effective, then it may be justified.
Every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable .. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
Wealth often takes away chances from men as well as poverty. There is none to tell the rich to go on striving, for a rich man makes the law that hallows and hollows his own life.
I am against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.
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