Law 23: Concentrate your forces.
Conserve your forces and energies by keeping them concentrated at their strongest point.
You gain more by finding a rich mine and mining it deeper than by fleeting from one shallow mine to another. Intensity beats extensity every time.
When looking for sources of power to elevate you, find the one key patron, the fat cow, who will give you milk for a long time to come.
Law 24: Play the perfect courtier.
The perfect courtier thrives in a world where everything revolves around power and political dexterity. He has mastered the art of indirection. He flatters, yields to superiors, and asserts power over others in the most oblique and graceful manner.
Learn and apply the laws of courtiership and there will be no limit to how far you can rise in the court.
Law 25: Recreate yourself
Do not accept the roles that society thrusts on you, recreate yourself by forging a new identity, one that demands attention and never bores the audience.
Be the master of your own image rather than let others define it for you.
Incorporate dramatic devices into your public gestures and actions, your power will be enhanced and your character will seem larger than life.
Law 26: Keep your hands clean
You must seem a paragon of civility and efficiency.
Your hands are never soiled by mistakes and nasty deeds.
Maintain such a spotless appearance by using others as unwitting pawns and screens to disguise your involvement.
Law 27: Play on people’s need to believe to create a cultlike following.
People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something, become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow.
Keep your words vague, but full of promise. Emphasize enthusiasm over rationality and clear thinking.
Give your new disciples rituals to perform, ask them to make sacrifices on your behalf.
In the absence of religions, your new belief system will bring you untold power.
Law 28: Enter action with boldness
If you are unsure of a course of action, do not attempt it.
Your doubts and hesitations will infect your execution. Timidity is dangerous. Better to enter with boldness. Any mistakes you commit through audacity are easily corrected with MORE audacity.
Everyone admires the bold, noone honors the timid.