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To maintain your independence you must always be needed and wanted. The more you are relied on, the more freedom you have.

Make people depend on you for their happiness and prosperity and you have nothing to fear.

Never teach them enough so that they can do without you.

The fate of those who do not make others dependent on them: Sooner or later someone comes along who can do the job as well as they can — someone younger, fresher, less expensive, less threatening.

Be the only one who can do what you do, and make the fate of those who hire you so entwined with yours that they cannot possibly get rid of you.

Joining forces with the powerful can be foolish: They will swallow you up.

No one will come to depend on you if they are already strong. If you are ambitious, it is much wiser to seek out weak rulers or masters with whom you can create a relationship of dependency. You become their strength, their intelligence, their spine. What power you hold!

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Necessity rules the world.

The ultimate power is the power to get people to do as you wish. When you can do this without having to force people or hurt them, when they willingly grant you what you desire, then your power is untouchable.

Your actions must seem natural and executed with ease. All the toil and practice that go into them, and also all the clever tricks, must be concealed. When you act, act effortlessly, as if you could do much more.

Avoid the temptation of revealing how hard you work — it only raises questions.

Teach no one your tricks or they will be used against you.

Keep the extent of your abilities unknown. The wise man does not allow his knowledge and abilities to be sounded to the bottom, if he desires to be honored by all. He allows you to know them but not to comprehend them.

No one must know the extent of his abilities, lest he be disappointed. No one ever has an opportunity of fathoming him entirely. For guesses and doubts about the extent of his talents arouse more veneration than accurate knowledge ofthem, be they ever so great.

As a person of power, you must research and practice endlessly before appearing in public, onstage or anywhere else.

Never expose the sweat and labor behind your poise. Some think such exposure will demonstrate their diligence and honesty, but it actually just makes them look weaker — as if anyone who practiced and worked at it could do what they had done.

Keep your effort and your tricks to yourself and you seem to have the grace and ease of a god. One never sees the source of a god’s power revealed; one only sees its effects.

The courtier must execute these gestures with what he calls sprezzatura, the capacity to make the difficult seem easy. Practice in all things a certain nonchalance which conceals all artistry and makes whatever one says or does seem uncontrived and effortless.