Steven Pressfield Quotes & Sayings

the Spartan right fall upon the defenders of Antirhion, not in frenzied shrieking rage, lip-curled and fang-bared, but predator-like, cold-blooded, applying the steel with the wordless cohesion of the killing pack and the homicidal efficiency of the hunt. — Steven Pressfield

What force is yanking at our sleeves? This process of self-revision and self-correction is so common we don't even notice. But it's a miracle. — Steven Pressfield

The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots. — Steven Pressfield

But nothing really clicked for me until I gave up completely on hitting the overlap and just did what I loved, even when I thought nobody else in the world would be interested. — Steven Pressfield

I guess what I want to say to us artists and entrepreneurs is that conventional yardsticks of success don't apply to all enterprises. Labors of love count. — Steven Pressfield

The professional has learned that success, like happiness, comes as a by-product of work. The professional concentrates on the work and allows rewards to come or not come, whatever they like. — Steven Pressfield

Similarly the call to growth can be conceptualized as personal (a daimon or genius, an angel or a muse) or as impersonal, like the tides or the transiting of Venus. Either way works, as long as we're comfortable with it. Or if extra-dimensionality doesn't sit well with you in any form, think of it as "talent," programmed into our genes by evolution. The point, for the thesis I'm seeking to put forward, is that there are forces we can call our allies. As Resistance works to keep us from becoming who we were born to be, equal and opposite powers are counterpoised against it. These are our allies and angels. — Steven Pressfield

Here is what you do, friends. Forget country. Forget king. Forget wife and children and freedom. Forget every concept, however noble, that you imagine you fight for here today. Act for this alone: for the man who stands at your shoulder. He is everything, and everything is contained within him. That is all I know. That is all I can tell you.
Dienekes at Thermopylae — Steven Pressfield

When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty. — Steven Pressfield

War, not peace, produces virtue. War, not peace, purges vice. War, and preparation for war, call forth all that is noble and honorable in a man. It unites him with his brothers and binds them in selfless love, eradicating in the crucible of necessity all which is base and ignoble. There in the holy mill of murder the meanest of men may seek and find that part of himself, concealed beneath the corrupt, which shines forth brilliant and virtuous, worthy of honor before the gods. Do not despise war, my young friend, nor delude yourself that mercy and compassion are virtues superior to andreia, to manly valor. — Steven Pressfield

If Resistance couldn't be beaten, there would be no Fifth Symphony, no Romeo and Juliet, no Golden Gate Bridge. Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance by definition is self-sabotage. — Steven Pressfield

You're where you wanted to be, aren't you? So you're taking a few blows. That's the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Stop complaining and be grateful. — Steven Pressfield

The opposite of fear," Dienekes said, "is love. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance obstructs movement only from a lower sphere to a higher. It kicks in when we seek to pursue a calling in the arts, launch an innovative enterprise, or evolve to a high station morally, ethically, or spiritually. — Steven Pressfield

it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. — Steven Pressfield

Evolution has programmed us to feel rejection in our guts. This is how the tribe inforced obedience, by wielding the threat of expulsion. Fear of rejection isn't just psychological; it's biological. It's in our cells. — Steven Pressfield

Now it's 1967. Nasser and the Arabs are saying to themselves: The Jews have beaten us in Round One and Round Two, but we will wipe them out for good in Round Three. — Steven Pressfield

The Band advances to the cadence of the flute, and has no call for retreat. Its code is Stand and Die. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance, his all-encompassing term for what Freud called the Death Wish - that destructive force inside human nature that rises whenever we consider a tough, long-term course of action that might do for us or others something that's actually good. — Steven Pressfield

The problem I've always discovered in my own work when this kind of thing happens when you hit the wall is there's almost always a reason. You've almost always made a mistake in the initial conception of the project. You misapprehended something or you thought something would work and now you're three quarters on the way through and you see that it doesn't work. — Steven Pressfield

Our greatest battle is to become ourselves, in the face of adversity. — Steven Pressfield

In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long-term grown, health, or integrity. Or, expressed another way, any act that derives from our high nature instead of our lower. Any of these will elicit Resistance. — Steven Pressfield

We get ourselves in trouble because it's a cheap way to get attention. Trouble is a faux form of fame. It's easier to get busted in the bedroom with the faculty chairman's wife than it is to finish that dissertation on the metaphysics of motley in the novellas of Joseph Conrad. — Steven Pressfield

When deliberating, think in campaigns and not battles; in wars and not
campaigns; in ultimate conquest and not wars. — Steven Pressfield

Sometimes entire families participate unconsciously in a culture of self-dramatization. The kids fuel the tanks, the grown-ups arm the phasers, the whole starship lurches from one spine-tingling episode to another. And the crew knows how to keep it going. If the level of drama drops below a certain threshold, someone jumps in to amp it up. Dad gets drunk, Mom gets sick, Janie shows up for church with an Oakland Raiders tattoo. It's more fun than a movie. And it works: Nobody gets a damn thing done. Sometimes — Steven Pressfield

Eternity is in love with the creations of time, — Steven Pressfield

Leonidas's and Dienekes' quips draw the individual out of his private terror and yoke him to the group. — Steven Pressfield

Do it or don't do it. — Steven Pressfield

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it's true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous. — Steven Pressfield

any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower. Any of these acts will elicit Resistance. — Steven Pressfield

Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they're better friends, truer friends. And we're better and truer to them. — Steven Pressfield

It's better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot. — Steven Pressfield

In short, if the Muse exists, she does not whisper to the untalented. — Steven Pressfield

Good. Then we will fight in the shade — Steven Pressfield

The Kabbalah describes angels as bundles of light, meaning intelligence, consciousness. Kabbalists believe that above every blade of grass is an angel crying "Grow! Grow!" ... I believe that above the entire human race is one super-angel, crying "Evolve! Evolve!" — Steven Pressfield

Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. — Steven Pressfield

The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is imprisoned by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be. — Steven Pressfield

The amateur dreads becoming who she really is because she fears that this new person will be judged by others as "different." The tribe will declare us "weird" or "queer" or "crazy." The tribe will reject us. Here's the truth: the tribe doesn't give a shit. There is no tribe. That gang or posse that we imagine is sustaining us by the bonds we share is in fact a conglomeration of individuals who are just as fucked up as we are and just as terrified. Each individual is so caught up in his own bullshit that he doesn't have two seconds to worry about yours or mine, or to reject or diminish us because of it. When we truly understand that the tribe doesn't give a damn, we're free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us. — Steven Pressfield

He's a sturdy fellow, bald as a hen's egg, and like all engineers, practical as a pensioner. — Steven Pressfield

Artists, writers and people in creative fields are entrepreneurs by necessity. Nobody gives them a paycheck or picks up their medical insurance. The ones who succeed learn to think and act like 'independent operators.' I think people who are technically 'employees' have to think this way as well. The company is not looking out for you. — Steven Pressfield

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart. — Steven Pressfield

From that day, I vowed never to squander a moment's care over the good opinion of others. May they rot in hell. You have heard of my abstemiousness in matters of food and sex. Here is why: I punished myself. If I caught my thoughts straying to another's opinion of me, I sent myself to bed without supper. As for women, I likewise permitted myself none. I missed no few meals, and no small pleasure, before I brought this vice under control. — Steven Pressfield

performing the commonplace under uncommonplace conditions. — Steven Pressfield

When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us . — Steven Pressfield

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family. It is the state of modern life. The — Steven Pressfield

That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure. — Steven Pressfield

The Muse honors the working stiff. — Steven Pressfield

How else account this usage, that enemies of yore may, by the passage of years alone, become friends? — Steven Pressfield

A contemporary or near-future book is much harder because you can't fake the facts. There are people alive who know much more than you do about the subject. You have to really have your research together - and of course no one can know everything about a topic. — Steven Pressfield

The sword master stepping onto the fighting floor knows he will be facing powerful opponents. Not the physical adversaries whom he will fight (though those indeed serve as stand-ins for the enemy). The real enemy is inside himself. The monk in meditation knows this. So does the yogi. So do the film editor and the video-game creator and the software writer. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance has no conscience. — Steven Pressfield

Figure out where you want to go; then work backwards from there. — Steven Pressfield

Warfare is theatre, I have said, and the essence of theatre is aritifce. What we show, we will not do. What we don't show, we will do. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. — Steven Pressfield

The professional is acutely aware of the intangibles that go into inspiration. Out of respect for them, she lets them work. She grants them their sphere while she concentrates on hers. — Steven Pressfield

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It's only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate. — Steven Pressfield

Don't prepare. Begin. — Steven Pressfield

The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle. — Steven Pressfield

Muse, We are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets. — Steven Pressfield

Someone once asked Somerset Maughham if he wrote on a schedule or only when struck by inspiration. "I write only when inspiration strikes," he replied. "Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. — Steven Pressfield

And they knew that when battle came, he would take his place not safely in the rear, but in the front rank, at the hottest and most perilous spot on the field. — Steven Pressfield

Start before you're ready. — Steven Pressfield

The highest treason a crab can commit is to make a leap for the rim of the bucket. — Steven Pressfield

...fear doesn't go away. — Steven Pressfield

That's why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with the work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve. — Steven Pressfield

The will to victory may be demonstrated in places other than actual battle. — Steven Pressfield

The amateur has a long list of fears. Near the top are two: Solitude and silence. The amateur fears solitude and silence because she needs to avoid, at all costs, the voice inside her head that would point her toward her calling and her destiny. So she seeks distraction. The amateur prizes shallowness and shuns depth. The culture of Twitter and Facebook is paradise for the amateur. — Steven Pressfield

There's a problem with the hierarchical orientation, though. When the numbers get too big, the thing breaks down. A pecking order can hold only so many chickens. — Steven Pressfield

The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present. — Steven Pressfield

Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us. Are you pursuing a shadow career? — Steven Pressfield

Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it's for failure. — Steven Pressfield

The pro keeps coming on. He beats Resistance at its own game by being even more resolute and even more implacable than it is. — Steven Pressfield

When we conceive an enterprise and commit to it in the face of our fears, something wonderful happens. A crack appears in the membrane. Like the first craze when a chick pecks at the inside of its shell. Angel midwives congregate around us; they assist as we give birth to ourselves, to that person we were born to be, to the one whose destiny was encoded in our soul, our daimon, our genius. — Steven Pressfield

A cavalryman's horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be alowed to know this. — Steven Pressfield

All of us need to begin to think in terms of our own inner strengths, our resilience and resourcefulness, our capacity to adapt and to rely upon ourselves and our families. — Steven Pressfield

When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set into motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose. This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don't. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. — Steven Pressfield

Egyptians cannot believe Israelis are all — Steven Pressfield

I was keenly conscious of the comrades-in-arms who had fallen with me. A bond surpassing by a hundredfold that which I had known in life bound me to them. I felt a sense of inexpressible relief and realized that I had feared, more than death, separation from them. I apprehended that excruciating war survivor's torment, the sense of isolation and self-betrayal experienced by those who had elected to cling yet to breath when their comrades had let loose their grip. — Steven Pressfield

By Blake's model, as I understand it, it's as though the Fifth Symphony existed already in that higher sphere, before Beethoven sat down and played dah-dah-dah-DUM. The catch was this: The work existed only as potential - without a body, so to speak. It wasn't music yet. You couldn't play it. You couldn't hear it. It needed someone. It needed a corporeal being, a human, an artist (or more precisely a genius, in the Latin sense of "soul" or "animating spirit") to bring it into being on this material plane. So the Muse whispered in Beethoven's ear. Maybe she hummed a few bars into a million other ears. But no one else heard her. Only Beethoven got it. He brought it forth. He made the Fifth Symphony a "creation of time," which "eternity" could be "in love with. — Steven Pressfield

The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into uncharted waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. — Steven Pressfield

Our team has zero; has he got Close Air Support, drones, anything? — Steven Pressfield

When we are succeeding - that is, when we have begun to overcome our self-doubt and self-sabotage, when we are advancing in our craft and evolving to a higher level - that's when panic strikes. When we experience panic, it means that we're about to cross a threshold. We're poised on the doorstep of a higher plane. — Steven Pressfield

The enemy is a very good teacher. - the Dalai Lama — Steven Pressfield

The Bhagavad-Gita tells us we have a right only to our labor, not to the fruits of our labor. All the warrior can give is his life; all the athlete can do is leave everything on the field. — Steven Pressfield

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness. — Steven Pressfield

Do not tell me death is real. It is not. I have sustained my heart for ages with the love my brother passed on to me, dead as he was. — Steven Pressfield

Don't prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready. — Steven Pressfield

The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell. — Steven Pressfield

The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul, — Steven Pressfield

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come. — Steven Pressfield

Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over."
"Not to me. Not to them. — Steven Pressfield

Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. — Steven Pressfield

A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and chiseled squint of the veteran. Even his submissions to terror, the very shit with which he paints his thighs under fire is trophy to him; he points it out to his comrades, laughing in the aftercourse of action as if it were a decoration for valour, for it makes him a salt, a veteran, an old hand. — Steven Pressfield

These scars on my body," Alexander declared, "were got for you, my brothers. Every wound, as you see, is in the front. Let that man stand forth from your ranks who has bled more than I, or endured more than I for your sake. Show him to me, and I will yield to your weariness and go home." Not a man came forward. Instead, a great cheer arose from the army. The men begged their king to forgive them for their want of spirit and pleaded with him only to lead them forward. — Steven Pressfield

I experienced it as a compulsion to self-destruct. I could not finish what I started. The closer I got, the more different ways I'd find to screw it up. — Steven Pressfield

You don't need to take a course or buy a product. All you have to do is change your mind. — Steven Pressfield

The power to take charge was in my hands; all I had to do was believe it. — Steven Pressfield

Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance. — Steven Pressfield