The stories he uses to compare and illustrate situations are incredible. Stoics, conquerors, philosophers. All the great thinkers and doers of history are likely included there.
And, it turns out that the book itself is also a great story.
Flow: 5/5
Actionability: 3/5
Mindset: 4/5
Some of My Highlights:
“This ignorance of how things really work is depressing to me. Because it opens us up to manipulation.”
“What important truth do very few people agree with you on?”
“He puts up a large screen in the office that ranks the writers and the articles based on traffic. He calls it the “NASDAQ of Content”.
“Fights break out. Conspiracies brew.”
“Peter would, at one point, pass me a copy of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World by Sir Edward Shepherd Creasy, the book he had read as he’d mulled his options over.”
“And rich men don’t tend to like feeling small, feeling that same powerlessness they had once felt at a young age that had driven them to accomplish the things they had accomplished.”
“‘One view of these things is that…,’ and then proceeds to explain the exact opposite of what he happens to personally believe.”
“Twenty-five hundred years ago, Thucydides would say that the three strongest motives for men were ‘fear, honor, and self-interest.'”
“It is the weaker party who relies on secrecy and ‘low tactics.’ Because they have to.”
“‘Anyone who is threatened and is forced by necessity either to act or to suffer,’ writes Machiavelli, ‘becomes a very dangerous man to the prince.'”