Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
0735217653
Ryan Holiday
Notes
“Anyone who is threatened and is forced by necessity either to act or to suffer becomes a very dangerous man to the prince.” – Machiavelli…Machiavelli would say, “there is only one, and that is when someone is left who may avenge the dead prince.” For this reason, Robert Greene warns, one must “crush your enemies totally.”
Rooted in every conspiracy is often shared loneliness, a smoldering frustration or bitterness.
A start-up is, in Peter’s definition, “a small group of people that you’ve convinced of a truth that nobody else believes in.”…“The things that I think I’m right about,” Thiel said, “other people are in some sense not even wrong about, because they’re not thinking about them.”
Most conspiracies are not found out. They are betrayed. Or they collapse from within, a betrayal of the cause itself.
“Never interrupt an enemy making a mistake.”
Machiavelli warns conspirators that the most dangerous time is after the deed is done.
Scipio Africanus, the general who defeated Hannibal, would say that an army should not only leave a road for their enemy to retreat by, they should pave it. The Romans had a name for this road, the Gallic Way.
Amor fati — loving, embracing the good in what has happened.
“There is a special sadness in achievement, in the knowledge that a long desired goal has been attained at last, and that life must now be shaped towards new ends.”