Formlessness Quotes

“By taking a shape, by having a visible plan, you open yourself to attack. Instead of taking a form for your enemy to grasp, keep yourself adaptable and on the move. Accept the fact that nothing is certain and no law is fixed. The best way to protect yourself is to be as fluid and formless as water; never bet on stability or lasting order. Everything changes.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Be like vapor. Do not give your opponents anything solid to attack; watch as they exhaust themselves pursuing you, trying to cope with your elusiveness. Only formlessness allows you to truly surprise your enemies — by the time they figure out where you are and what you are up to, it is too late.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“Always know the shape you take—know it so well you can shift it to your purpose, so well the form gives way to formlessness again. What is a grain but a seed? And from a seed, you can grow anything. Like, say, a family.”
― Max Gladstone, Empress of Forever

“Detachment doesn’t mean you should ignore form; it means you have to attach to form through and through. A form may bother you, but you need form because you love truth, you love peace, you love life itself.”
― Dainin Katagiri, Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time

“The forms are many in which the unchanging seeks relief from its formlessness.”
― Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies

“That is the power of formlessness — it gives the aggressor nothing to react against, nothing to hit.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“In the face of the world's harshness and danger, organisms of any kind develop protection — a coat of armor, a rigid system, a comforting ritual. For the short term, it may work, but for the long term it spells disaster. People weighed down by a system and inflexible ways of doing things cannot move fast, cannot sense or adapt to change. They lumber around more and more slowly until they go the way of the brontosaurus. Learn to move fast and adapt or you will be eaten.

The best way to avoid this fate is to assume formlessness. No predator alive can attack what it cannot see.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“But for those that have not already attained mastery, structure and doctrine are needed because formlessness is useless to the beginner.”
― Gereon Hermkes, Scaling Done Right: How to Achieve Business Agility with Scrum@Scale and Make the Competition Irrelevant

“Hard work shapes formless life into a masterpiece.”
― Kamini Arichandran