Quotes & Sayings About Mastery

Mastery is not measured by the number of terrible things you eliminate from your life, but by the number of times you eliminate calling them terrible. — Neale Donald Walsch

Success brings a measure of credibility.

The fastest way to turn credibility into authority is to deliver results.

The best way to deliver results is to help others succeed.

You can help others succeed by being helpful.

Always look for ways to be helpful. Helpful people are always in demand. — Richie Norton

ReThink Training: The best process of learning is on the job, just-in-time, "nibble-knowledge" to incrementally transform mindsets and skillsets irrevocably. — Tony Dovale

There is a mathematical underpinning that you must first acquire, mastery of each mathematical subdiscipline leading you to the threshold of the next. In turn you must learn arithmetic, Euclidian geometry, high school algebra, differential and integral calculus, ordinary and partial differential equations, vector calculus, certain special functions of mathematical physics, matrix algebra, and group theory. For most physics students, this might occupy them from, say, third grade to early graduate school - roughly 15 years. Such a course of study does not actually involve learning any quantum mechanics, but merely establishing the mathematical framework required to approach it deeply. — Carl Sagan

Jack of all trades or master of one? If you're a master of one, you'll soon be a master of none. Times are a changin. Be a jack of all trades. Or better, master of many! — Richie Norton

If fear is cultivated it will become stronger, if faith is cultivated it will achieve mastery. — John Paul Jones

If only 1 out of 10 businesses succeeds, start 10 businesses. Just sayin. — Richie Norton

If there's a new HBO series, you know there's going to be a certain level of storytelling mastery - that you can trust it. — Chris Milk

Positivity in the mind fuels ingenuity.
Positivity in the heart fuels generosity.
Positivity in the soul fuels mastery. — Matshona Dhliwayo

Another thing is war. I am naturally warlike. Attacking is one of my instincts. Being able to be an enemy, being an enemy - these require a strong nature, perhaps; in any case every strong nature presupposes them. It needs resistances, so it seeks
resistance: aggressive pathos is just as integrally necessary to strength as the feeling of revenge and reaction is to weakness. Woman, forinstance, is vengeful: that is a condition of her weakness, as is her sensitivity to other people's afflictions. - The strength of anattacker can in a way be gauged by the opposition he requires; allgrowth makes itself manifest by searching out a more powerful opponent - or problem: for a philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels, too. The task is not to master all resistances, but only those against which one has to pit one's entire strength, suppleness, and mastery-at-arms - opponents who are equal ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not always possible to do away with negative thinking, but with persistence and practice, one can gain mastery over them so that they do not take the upper hand. — Stephen Richards

...The happy Warrior... is he... who, doomed to go in company with pain, and fear, and bloodshed, miserable train turns his necessity to glorious gain; in face of these doth exercise a power which is our human nature's highest dower: controls them and subdues, transmutes, bereaves of their bad influence, and their good receives: by objects, which might force the soul to abate her feeling, rendered more compassionate; is placable- because occasions rise so often that demand such sacrifice; more skillful in self-knowledge, even more pure, as tempted more; more able to endure, as more exposed to suffering and distress; thence, also, more alive to tenderness. — William Wordsworth

It pays to know humility, lest the delusion of control, of mastery, overwhelms. — Steven Erikson

In Mastery author Robert Greene argues that we all have the ability to push the limits of human potential. — Carmine Gallo

The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning. — Wassily Kandinsky

There's no mastery to be had. You love the attempt. You don't master a story any more than you master a river. You feel lucky to canoe down it. — Garrison Keillor

The master initiate of any craft appears magical to the uninitiated. — Bryant McGill

It [slavery] has exercised absolute mastery over the American Church ... With the Bible in their hands, her priesthood have attempted to prove that slavery came down from God out of heaven. They have become slaveholders and dealers in human flesh. — William Lloyd Garrison

Completing the circle is both philosophical and tactical - there is a growing sense of mastery that comes with practice, diligence, and experience. — Eric Mann

It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set. — Joshua Waitzkin

He had spent a lifetime cleansing his mind of poison. He had searched his heart, found the corruption, and removed it. He had torn away the lies - lies he'd been told and had believed, and lies he had devised and used against himself. This was his mastery - the purification of the mind and the recovery of authenticity. This scene symbolized the mastery of death, the awakening. — Miguel Ruiz

As Washington, Adams, and Jefferson reached the cusp of adulthood, each exhibited a passion for independence. Each hungered for emancipation from the entanglements of childhood and sought to carve out an autonomous existence. The handmaiden to each young man's zeal for self-mastery was a propulsive ambition that drove him to yearn for more than his father had attained, for more even than his father had ever hoped to achieve. — John Ferling

Those who prefer their English sloppy have only themselves to thank if the advertisement writer uses his mastery of the vocabulary and syntax to mislead their weak minds. — Dorothy L. Sayers

But I have learned that self-mastery and the consistent care of one's mind, body and soul are essential to finding one's highest self and living the life of one's dreams. — Robin S. Sharma

The first and most important step is to realize that, as my mother used to say, fearlessness isn't the absence of fear, but the mastery of fear. It's not that you never have fear, but that you don't let your fears stop you. — Arianna Huffington

Careless of waste, wallowing in refuse, exterminating the enemies ... despising age, denying human natural history, fabricating pseudotraditions, swamped in the repeated personal crises of the aging preadolescent; all are familiar images of American society. They are signs of private nightmares of incoherence and disorder in broken climaxes where technologies in pursuit of mastery create ever-worsening problems - private nightmares expanded to a social level. — Paul Shepard

When creativity has become your habit; when you've learned to manage time, resources, expectations, and the demands of others; when you understand the value and place of validation, continuity, and purity of purpose, then you're on the way to an artist's ultimate goal; the achievement of mastery. — Twyla Tharp

It is said that it takes 10,000 hours to develop mastery and excellence. How many hours have you clocked today on your passion? — John Assaraf

Most of my ideas are based on the latest research on productivity, performance and mental mastery - that's why so many iconic companies bring me in to help them grow and win. — Robin S. Sharma

While the world has found the right names for all chronic mental diseases, I believe poetry is also a brain dysfunction, yet the only one that owns itself the mastery for the cure. Isn't it lovely to say, "He/She suffers of Poetry?". — Ioana-Cristina Casapu

Like the body craves oxygen, the mind is desperate for certainty. It believes that without a safe foothold on reality, it will die.
But the fascinating thing is that the illusion of certainty is exactly the opposite of safety because it hardens and narrows the vision to make everything fit its own scope. Then when new information arrives which would be its ally, the mind pushes it away in favor of the leaky life raft to which it clings, sinking all the while beneath the waves of change.
In fact, the only antidote for this is to embrace 'I don't know' so deeply that a powerful, dynamic safety emerges. This is like learning to surf so well that a tsunami wave shows up as a challenge to test our mastery. — Jacob Nordby

The vehemence of emotion, stirred by grief and love within me, was claiming mastery, and struggling for full sway; and asserting a right to predominate: to overcome, to live, rise, and reign at last; yes,
and to speak. — Charlotte Bronte

It is one thing to own a woman, and it is another to have her within the bonds of an excellent mastery. — John Norman

Rulers are not anointed. They are created by the void of self-mastery. — T.F. Hodge

You can't judge a man by the way he reacts when things go right, but by the way he reacts when things go wrong. — Richie Norton

Practice is the path of mastery. — George Leonard

An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child's energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. — Maria Montessori

Take a moment to catch your breath and revel in your rhetorical mastery and achievement. — Christopher Moore

Even without comparing ourselves to the world's greatest, we set such high standards for ourselves that neither we nor anyone else could ever meet them-and nothing is more destructive to creativity than this. We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. — George Leonard

Mastery ... is to work toward simplicity; replace complex technology with knowledge, hard work, and skill. — Yvon Chouinard

I just refer to myself as being Spirit, Mind and Body like everybody else and working toward the mastery of my natural divinity and the healing of my emotional mind. — Leonard Orr

If you keep focusing on what people have to say or will say about you, you will lose focus of what God has called you to do. Never let distractions bother you...if you do, you will only be giving your energy to an unworthy cause. — Kemi Sogunle

Playing to passion when you can will keep students motivated and working toward mastery. — Starr Sackstein

My brain power depends on my retained mastery of analyzing in detail what's happening in my world and in my mind and body. I must continue to practice to retain my constructive and analytic powers. The goal is to be a master of my environment. — Michael Merzenich

Men cannot be men - much less good or heroic men - unless their actions have meaningful consequences to people they truly care about. Strength requires an opposing force, courage requires risk, mastery requires hard work, honor requires accountability to other men. Without these things, we are little more than boys playing at being men, and there is no weekend retreat or mantra or half-assed rite of passage that can change that. A rite of passage must reflect a real change in status and responsibility for it to be anything more than theater. No reimagined manhood of convenience can hold its head high so long as the earth remains the tomb of our ancestors — Jack Donovan

In order to gain mastery, you need to dismantle as much as you put together.'
'Then there'd be no buildings left in the world,' Jahan ventured. 'Everything would be razed to the ground.'
'We are not destroying the buildings, son. We are destroying our desire to possess them. Only God is the owner. Of the stone and of the skill. — Elif Shafak

Each moment calls for a different stylistic essence and a different sense of impact, and mastery of this balance is an art form - a very learnable art form. — Nina Garcia

They [parents] can help the children work out schedules for homework, play, and television that minimize the conflicts involved inwhat to do first. They can offer moral support and encouragement to persist, to try again, to struggle for understanding and mastery. And they can share a child's pleasure in mastery and accomplishment. But they must not do the job for the children. — Dorothy H Cohen

A pivotal spiritual attribute is that of self-mastery-th e strength to place reason over appetite. Self-mastery builds a strong conscience. And your conscience determines your moral responses in difficult, tempting, and trying situations. — Russell M. Nelson

His mother and father were agnostics, and Jim respected devout Christians in the same way that he respected people who were members of the Graf Zeppelin Club or shopped at the Chinese department stores, for their mastery of an exotic foreign ritual. Besides, those who worked hardest for others, like Mrs. Philips and Mrs. Gilmour and Dr. Ransome, often held beliefs that turned out to be correct. — J.G. Ballard

But in the end, mastery involves working and working and showing little improvement, perhaps with a few moments of flow pulling you along, then making a little progress, and then working and working on that new, slightly higher plateau again. It's grueling, to be sure. But that's not the problem; that's the solution. — Daniel H. Pink

Be Willing to Pay the Price If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it wouldn't seem wonderful at all. MICHELANGELO Renaissance sculptor and painter who spent 4 years lying on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel Behind every great achievement is a story of education, training, practice, discipline, and sacrifice. You have to be willing to pay the price. Maybe that price is pursuing one single activity while putting everything else in your life on hold. Maybe it's investing all of your own personal wealth or savings. Maybe it's the willingness to walk away from the safety of your current situation. But though many things are typically required to reach a successful outcome, the willingness to do what's required adds that extra dimension to the mix that helps you persevere in the face of overwhelming challenges, setbacks, pain, and even personal — Jack Canfield

Confidence comes with mastery, and the combination enables me to reach new heights. — Pauline Brown

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery. — William Golding

Education is like a diamond with many facets: It includes the basic mastery of numbers and letters that give us access to the treasury of human knowledge, accumulated and refined through the ages; it includes technical and vocational training as well as instruction in science, higher mathematics, and humane letters. — Ronald Reagan

He (Anwar Sadat) records that he was almost loathe to leave his prison cell because it was there that he realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self. — Stephen R. Covey

What is more malleable is always superior over that which is immovable. This is the principle of controlling things by going along with them, of mastery through adaptation. — Jaimal Yogis

The ability to think for one's self depends upon one's mastery of the language. — Joan Didion

It may be remarked in passing that success is an ugly thing. Men are deceived by its false resemblances to merit. To the crowd, success wears almost the features of true mastery, and the greatest dupe of this counterfeit talent is History. — Victor Hugo

Half of your mastery of power comes from what you do NOT do, what you do not ALLOW yourself to get dragged into. — Robert Greene

There's no "get rich quick." There's no "overnight success."

However, this doesn't mean that when you decide to start a business that you're just starting. You could start making new money tomorrow.

I was fishing with my son and taught him that you can't catch a fish unless your line is in the water. A truth my dad once taught me.
You may have spent years learning a skill or creating a product or service that you just simply haven't thought to monetize. Like leaving a fishing pole on the ground along side the river, but not having your line in the water yet.

All you need to create a new stream of income is to make something consumable and offer it at a price that someone will pay.

If you're not making offers, you're not making money.

Get your line in the water! — Richie Norton

There are no limits to your possibilities! Your successes will multiply and increase in proportion to your mastery of the law. — Roger McDonald

Awareness by itself is not enough: it must be joined by mastery. We need gradually to develop a steering ability to keep ourselves from slipping mechanically into this or that sub-personality. Thus we become able to identify with each part of our being as we wish. We can have more choice. It is the difference between being impotently transported by a roller coaster and, instead, driving a car and being able to choose which way to go and for what purpose to make the journey. — Piero Ferrucci

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath ... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again. — Reinhold Messner

You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself. — Jim Whittaker

However, they have not acquired a perfect mastery of the art of lying; they lie so clumsily and ineptly that anyone who is just a little observant can easily detect it. But for us Christians they stand as a terrifying example of God's wrath. — Martin Luther

A person with power controls their life and their destiny. They have a mastery. Their moments are aware moments in this world, never wasted. — Frederick Lenz

Nihilism is a natural consequence of a culture (or civilization) ruled and regulated by categories that mask manipulation, mastery and domination of peoples and nature. — Cornel West

Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education]. — Swami Vivekananda

I have seen far by seeing through the lens of Jiu Jitsu. I have exchanged a great deal of physical health for these insights, and these were trades worth making. My efforts were worth the return. I have sacrificed much in the name of this craft. Not for trophies or belts or prestige. For these fall away like dust. I pursued this art so fervently because it was not actually Jiu Jitsu I pursued. It was myself. — Chris Matakas

The time that leads to mastery is dependent on the intensity of our focus. — Robert Greene

Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat. — Plotinus

Devote yourself to learning something new about your field of mastery every day. — Robin Sharma

3,2,1 ... Launch! A lot of preparation goes into launching a rocket ship. No short cuts or cheating will get that rocket to its destination. A lot of hard work and dedication goes into every launch. What are you doing to launch? Are you doing the proper work needed? Are you dedicated? — Robert D. Kintigh

I know how to go, go, go. Stopping, I've learned is the stuff of mastery. — Danielle LaPorte

Flying alone! Nothing gives such a sense of mastery over time over mechanism, mastery indeed over space, time, and life itself, as this. — Cecil Day-Lewis

I have always found that effort is most easily produced when performed for the benefit of something external to ourselves. — Chris Matakas

If you have time to write a business plan, you have time to prove the model. Just sayin. — Richie Norton

The ego keeps you almost in a drunken state. You don't know who you are because you believe what others say about you. And you don't know who others are because you believe what others say about others. This is the make-believe, illusory world in which we live. Wake up, become more conscious. By becoming conscious you will become a master of your own being. Mastery knows nothing of self, and the self knows nothing of mastery. Let that be absolutely clear to you. My — Osho

Imagine that the whole world belongs to you. The birch trees in New Hampshire's White Mountains are yours, and so are the cirrus clouds in the western sky at dusk and the black sand on the beaches of Hawaii's big island.
You own everything, my dear sovereign - the paintings in all the museums of the world, as well as the internet and the wild horses and the roads. Please take good care of it all, OK? Be an enlightened monarch who treats your domain with reverent responsibility. And make sure you also enjoy the full measure of fun that comes with such mastery. Glide through life as if all of creation is yearning to honor and entertain you. — Rob Brezsny

Luke Skywalker, hero of the Battle of Yavin, has cast his lot with the rebels, lending his formidable piloting skills to whatever missions his leaders assign him. But he is haunted by his all-too-brief lessons with Obi-Wan Kenobi and the growing certainty that mastery of the Force will be his path to victory over the Empire. — Kevin Hearne

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

Without question, students need to practice, review, and drill skills, but they should do so only in the spirit of working toward more complex mastery of those skills. Redundant drill of skills is inherently boring and insulting to the learner, and it is one of the most effective methods for turning students off to learning. — Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Brilliant, inspiring ... if you are on a pursuit of self-mastery, make time to read this! — Jennifer Lacy

The crowd, in fact, is composed of individuals; it must therefore be in every man's power to become what he is, an individual. From becoming an individual no one, no one at all, is excluded, except he who excludes himself by becoming a crowd. To become a crowd, to collect a crowd about one, is on the contrary to affirm the distinctions of human life. The most well-meaning person who talks about these distinctions can easily offend an individual. But then it is not the crowd which possesses power, influence, repute, and mastery over men, but it is the invidious distinctions of human life which despotically ignore the single individual as the weak and impotent, which in a temporal and worldly interest ignore the eternal truth- the single individual. — Soren Kierkegaard

I had never heard anyone play like Benny Goodman and had never seen anyone like him on the stage. I realize now that what impressed me and stayed with me in memory was - the sounds he made. He played so purely. The music seemed to come from him, not just the instrument he played with such mastery. — Marian Seldes

What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back? — P. J. O'Rourke

Team learning is the Process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members desire. It builds on the discipline of developing a shared vision. It also builds on personal mastery, for talented teams are made up of talented individuals. — Peter Senge

If you disconnect yourself from principles you believe must work for others, then you create a leadership brand that is not genuine and that will lead you to say one thing and practice another. This is the reason why knowledge and mastery issues covered at a personal level, must be revisited with a leadership focus. — Archibald Marwizi

How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself. — George Leonard

We should every night call ourselves to an account;
What infirmity have I mastered today?
What passions opposed? What temptation resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abort of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift. — Seneca.

He is thoughtful whose mind is directed by his will, whose mind fulfills his intentions, whose mind is under the control of his intention ... It is not till a person has gained mastery over his mind, till he is above this activity, that he is a ruling power, a true person. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Mastery is the breeding ground of fresh, creative passion. — Mollie Marti

Self-knowledge is the stepping stone to self-mastery. Step — Robin S. Sharma

Happily, the benefits of training in meditation arrive long before mastery does. — Sam Harris

Technology does make possible advance toward shalom; progress in mastery of the world can bring shalom nearer. But the limits of technology must also be acknowledged; technology is entirely incapable of bringing about shalom between ourselves and God, and it is only scarcely capable of bringing about the love of self and neighbour. — Nicholas Wolterstorff

Excellence is inconveniently difficult. — William H Gass

I also maintain that clear knowledge of natural science must be acquired, in the first instance, through mastery of medicine alone. — Hippocrates

I know of no genius but the genius of hard work. — J. M. W. Turner

And, partly, I had found that theory-structure was a superpower in helping one get what one wanted. As I had early discovered in school wherein I had excelled without labor, guided by theory, while many others, without mastery of theory failed despite monstrous effort. Better theory I thought had always worked for me and, if now available could make me acquire capital and independence faster and better assist everything I loved. — Charlie Munger