"Machiavellian Bosses view the universe as an enormous pyramid. There is one spot at the top and it belongs to them, by divine right. It is not about you. And it will never be about you, except for the moment you are actually in their way."

"Telling God and Machiavellian Bosses what they want to hear is always your best bet."

"Lose the battles to win the war. Ask for forgiveness. Acknowledge his presence. Don't make the mistake of ignoring him. His ease is your ease. If your attitude is resentful, he will bring thunder and lightning on your head and on the heads of your coworkers."

"Turning down a Machiavellian invitation can be interpreted as resistance or a possible power move on your part."

"I've seen heads of families bypass talented, capable, loyal, dedicated, lifelong employees to hand their businesses over to a son or daughter. Typically, the first generation establishes the business, the second generation grows it, the third generation barely sustains it, and the fourth generation destroys what is left."

"There are people who think they're God. Thinking you're God transcends God Bosses play church. ...He is playing God to compensate for a tremendous lack of confidence.'"

"The equitable treatment of all team members is nearly as important in the workplace as communication."

"Fairness in the office simply means applying the rules fairly, equally, and without regard for workplace political alliances."

"When people's hopes and expectations are built up only to be demolished, they become a lot harder to motivate."

"Be thankful for you I-Boss. He might be the easiest to work with and the least threatening to your health of all other boss types."

"When you have a bad boss, chances are that somebody is up to no good."

"Learning a new cadence will serve you better than forming your own drum line. You'll probably just frustrate yourself and you boss, who in turn will drum you out."

"Uncertainty always leads to uneasiness."

"People who habitually speak positively of others tend to do so in all circumstances. Those who tend to criticize others in your presence and recruit you to agree with their cutting remarks will probably criticize you when you are out of the room."

"Once you have become a transcendent idiot - one who can reflect upon his personal condition and circumstances—you can no longer wander back into the idiot population and disappear."

"Admitting powerlessness is the first step to recovery. Subsequent steps will reveal who has the power and how you can tap into it to achieve your own serenity."

"The only stupidity we can deal with is our own."

"Good Bosses are aware that sharing information in a thorough, timely manner makes people feel included, respected, and acknowledged for their ability to contribute. And they are receptive to feedback - all the time."

"Deliberately scheme how you can be a positive influence in your working environment."

"There is nothing more miserable to a boss than a detractor."

"Idiots lack imagination, coupled with the tunnel vision - means the ship will be submerged before they realize it hit an iceberg. You not only need to do or say things that warrant attention, you need to exaggerate them so much he can't possibly fail to notice."

"You are ultimately your own boss, even if you report to someone else."

"Sometimes what appears to be an idiot is just a regular person with idiosyncrasies."

"Good Bosses treat those with more power the same way they treat those with less power."

"You can't let your I-Boss know you're training him."

"Your I-Boss may have a greater emotional investment in getting things done right than he is willing or able to admit."

"If an I-Boss isn't sure whether something a team member does is good or bad, he is likely to err on the side of bad and seize control of the situation."

"If an employee does something wonderful, an I-Boss might feel a twinge of humiliation. He can take steps to make the employee feel what he's feeling. That's why team members who do good things are routinely embarrassed or humiliated by their I-Bosses."

"Don't feel dirty or guilty for kissing up. It's survival."

"Classical management theory would have us believe that the fastest way to get a square peg through a round hole is to use a bigger hammer."

"Good bosses provide a constant flow of clear and concise information and encourage you and the rest of your team to do the same."

"Being a Good Boss is so easy, it makes you wonder why anyone would invest the extra effort and energy required to be a bad one."

"Note what types of behavior they approve of and start behaving accordingly."

"The vast majority of your organization's leadership potential is probably locked up behind the bars of bureaucracy or staggering under the weight of organizational inertia. The cultural dragon you are fighting feeds on old school notions about leadership that grew out of a Napoleonic, hierarchical military organizational model."

"Our own flaws are almost incredibly irritating when they show up in the words and actions of someone with power and authority over us."

"Your Idiot Boss needs to feel that someone is on his side, in his corner, and has his back. Find times to support your Idiot Boss, especially in his times of uncertainty and doubt."

"Active idiots carry their dysfunction into positions of leadership and remain oblivious to the havoc they wreak."

"When dumb and dumber are running organizations, corporations, and government agencies, it's not funny anymore."

"After studying idiot bosses for more than two decades, I finally understand why females in certain species eat their young."

"Idiot Bosses are mutant hiccups of organizational evolution with cockroach-like immunity to calamities that wipe out truly talented and creative people."

"Some idiots are granted the freedom to do whatever they want to do - and have unlimited resources to do so. They will also receive complete anonymity on demand, no accountability - and not lift a finger to make it all possible."

"Why must intelligent people suffer from worry, fear, and anxiety while idiots sleep well at night?"

"What purpose is being served by keeping idiots oblivious to the carnage they create?"

"I never realized what it was really like to work for an idiot until I started working for myself."

"People, even poor people, were in general more contented before the 1914-18 war than they are now, although not nearly so well provided with comforts and luxuries. Incidentally they were also more often people of strong individuality, "characters" or "personalities" as we might say; not of course always either virtuous or agreeable, but qualitatively distinctive, not mere drops in an ocean of mediocrity. And they were more content with their lot than we are. What then is the true criterion of contentment? Can it be anything but the acceptance of one's lot, whatever it may be? Or in other words, knowing one's place and fulfilling faithfully whatever function may be associated with it, with a pride in the quality of the product as the principal incentive rather than any tangible reward; knowing, perhaps, that not to want is better than to have; and above all being intelligent enough not to place one's best hopes in nothing but the satisfactions which a short sojourn in this world can bring. All these things are criteria of contentment, and at the same time they are universal ethical constituents of every religion and tradition."

"If the confusion, fear and discontent of our times seem to be reaching towards an extreme, despite a technological development bringing a wealth and a luxury unparalleled in history, why is an exactly coincident decay of religion scarcely ever suggested as a causal factor?"

"Science offers no alternative framework. The best it can offer is wealth in a wide sense of the term, that is to say, the satisfaction of a wide variety of desires. It cannot conceive of any means of achieving that escape from desires we call "contentment" otherwise than through the satisfaction of those desires; it has not yet learnt that there is no limit to the multiplication of desires, nor that, since different people's desires are often mutually incompatible, an indefinite multiplication of desires increases conflict as well as discontent."

"Anyone who clings to religion is clinging, not to an arbitrary framework of man's devising, but to the only framework that can serve as a starting-point for the realization of an inward freedom that is independent of terrestrial contingencies."