The 50th Law

This uniqueness that you express is not anything wild or too strange. That is an affectation in itself. People are rarely that different.

Understand: you are one of a kind. Your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history. There are ideas unique to you, a specific rhythm and perspective that are your strengths, not your weaknesses. You must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.

Finally he arrived at what he believed to be the root cause—dependency. As it stood, African Americans couldn’t do things completely on their own—they depended on the government, on liberals, on their leaders, on everybody but themselves.

For this purpose he devised the following strategy: He would act like a free man while surrounded by walls.

His superiority, he realized, was that he knew that he knew nothing. This left his mind open to experiencing things as they are, the source of all knowledge.

Don’t get caught up in people’s grand gestures, in the public face they put on. Pay more attention to the details, to the little things they reveal in their day-to-day lives.

Malcolm X was a realist

Your goal is to follow the path of Napoleon. You want to take in as much as possible with your own eyes. You communicate with people up and down the chain of command within your organization. You do not draw any barriers to your social interactions.

dig deeper. Always question why this particular event has happened, what the motives of the various actors are, who really is in control, who benefits by this action. Often, it will revolve around money and power—that is what people are usually fighting over, despite the surface gloss they give to it.