Pressfield Quotes & Sayings

I would rather have an army of deer commanded by a lion than an army of lions commanded by a deer!" Here — Steven Pressfield

If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice of the world, it's our job to realize it and get down to business. — 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

To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence. — Steven Pressfield

The first duty is to sacrifice to the gods and pray them to grant you the thought,words, and deeds likely to render your command most pleasing to the gods and bring yourself, your friends, and your city the fullest measure of affection and glory and advantage — Xenophon

At least twice a week, I pause in the rush of work and have a meeting with myself. (If I were part of a team, I'd call a team meeting.) I ask myself, again, of the project: "What is this damn thing about?" Keep refining your understanding of the theme; keep narrowing it down. — Steven Pressfield

The children who were able to sit for three minutes with a marshmallow on the table in front of them without eating it were rewarded with two marshmallows when the experimenter returned. But that's as crazy as inbox-watching. Krishna said we have the right to our labor, but not to the fruits of our labor. He meant that the piano is its own reward, as is the canvas, the barre, and the movieola. Fuck the marshmallows. — Steven Pressfield

Once we commit to action, the worst thing we can do is to stop. — Steven Pressfield

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. — Steven Pressfield

nothing can alter the fact that beneath the fascist insignia of their uniforms, these men are fathers, husbands, sons. I — Steven Pressfield

THE ARTIST'S LIFE Are you a born writer? — Steven Pressfield

Playing for money, or adopting the attitude of one who plays for money, lowers the fever. — Steven Pressfield

All genuine epiphanies seem to follow this model: their defining quality is the relinquishment of delusion. The initial fear is that one has lost something. A cherished self-conception must be given up, and one feels diminished by it. This is mistaken, however. A person discovers that he has been made stronger by the jettisoning of this sham and disadvantageous baggage. In fact, he has become more "himself," by aligning his self-concept more closely with fact. — Steven Pressfield

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death. — 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

Resistance is always lying and always full of shit. — Steven Pressfield

My wish for you, Kallistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you have already fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be. — Steven Pressfield

The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first. — Steven Pressfield

The Greeks' sculpture and athletics celebrated the human form, their literature and music human passion, their discourse and philosophy human reason. In — Steven Pressfield

The problem with friends and family is that they know us as we are. They are invested in maintaining us as we are. — Steven Pressfield

Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day. — Steven Pressfield

Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack. — Steven Pressfield

If you were meant to cure cancer or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children, you hurt me, you hurt the planet. You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite God Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter further along its path back to God. — Stephen Pressfield

A horse must be a bit mad to be a good cavalry mount, and its rider must be completely so. — Steven Pressfield

The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery. The professional shuts up. She doesn't talk about it. She does her work. — Steven Pressfield

You are the commanders, your men will look to you and act as you do. Let no officer keep to himself or his brother officers, but circulate daylong among his men. Let them see you and see you unafraid. Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action. — Steven Pressfield

The opposite of fear is love - love of the challenge, love of the work, the pure joyous passion to take a shot at our dream and see if we can pull it off. — Steven Pressfield

The Problem Is the Problem A professional does not take success or failure personally. That's Priority Number One for us now. That our project has crashed is not a reflection of our worth as human beings. It's just a mistake. It's a problem - and a problem can be solved. — Steven Pressfield

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing.
We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others. — 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

When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own. — Steven Pressfield

He looks upon sky and steppe and sees that which God has created. I look and see God Himself. — Steven Pressfield

El-Masri lies under gravel and shingle, with no part of him visible aboveground except his left hand — Steven Pressfield

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

You may think that you've lost your passion, or that you can't identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true. Fear saps passion. When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion. — Steven Pressfield

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood - it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." Martin Luther King, Jr. — Steven Pressfield

The professional gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow. But she never forgets that Resistance is using criticism against her on a far more diabolical level. Resistance enlists criticism to reinforce the fifth column of fear already at work inside the artist's head, seeking to break her will and crack her dedication. The professional does not fall for this. Her resolution, before all others, remains: No matter what, I will never let Resistance beat me. — Steven Pressfield

What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. — Steven Pressfield

Who profits from a king's fidelity save generations a thousand years unborn, and which of his works will they recall at that remove, or care? — Steven Pressfield

Some heavy shit is coming down, brothers, and we're going to go through it. — Steven Pressfield

Turning pro is a mindset. If we are struggling with fear, self-sabotage, procrastination, self-doubt, etc., the problem is, we're thinking like amateurs. Amateurs don't show up. Amateurs crap out. Amateurs let adversity defeat them. The pro thinks differently. He shows up, he does his work, he keeps on truckin', no matter what. — Steven Pressfield

What happens when we turn pro is, we finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads. At last we find the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along was our passion, our calling, our destiny. — Steven Pressfield

Then there's the third way proffered by the Lord of Discipline, which is beyond both hierarchy and territory. That is to do the work and give it to Him. Do it as an offering to God. Give the act to me. Purged of hope and ego, — Steven Pressfield

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

A writer writes with his genius; an artist paints with hers; everyone who creates operates from this sacramental center. — Steven Pressfield

Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren't diseases, they're marketing ploys. Doctors didn't discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did. — Steven Pressfield

Resistance in my experience always kicks in when you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level or to identify with a braver part of yourself or your higher nature. So it's that negative repelling force. It's kind of the dragon that we have to slay every day if we're artists or entrepreneurs. — Steven Pressfield

I was thirty years old before I had an actual thought. Everything up till then was either what Buddhists call "monkey-mind" chatter or the reflexive regurgitation of whatever my parents or teachers said, or whatever I saw on the news or read in a book, or heard somebody rap about, hanging around the street corner. — Steven Pressfield

Doctors estimate that seventy to eighty percent of their business is non-health-related. People aren't sick, they're self-dramatizing. Sometimes the hardest part of a medical job is keeping a straight face. — Steven Pressfield

Our greatest fear is fear of success. 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. — Steven Pressfield

The hill is a sonofabitch but what can you do? Set one foot in front of another and keep climbing. — Steven Pressfield

No matter how great a writer, artist, or entrepreneur, he is a mortal, he is fallible. He is not proof against Resistance. He will drop the ball; he will crash. That's why they call it rewriting. — Steven Pressfield

habits and qualities that the professional possesses that the amateur doesn't: 1. The professional shows up every day 2. The professional stays on the job all day 3. The professional is committed over the long haul 4. For the professional, the stakes are high and real Further: 5. The professional is patient 6. The professional seeks order 7. The professional demystifies 8. The professional acts in the face of fear 9. The professional accepts no excuses 10. The professional plays it as it lays 11. The professional is prepared 12. The professional does not show off 13. The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique 14. The professional does not hesitate to ask for help 15. The professional does not take failure or success personally 16. The professional does not identify with his or her instrument 17. The professional endures adversity 18. The professional self-validates 19. The professional reinvents herself 20. The professional is recognized by other professionals — Steven Pressfield

Have you seen interviews with the young John Lennon or Bob Dylan, when the reporter tries to ask about their personal selves? The boys deflect these queries with withering sarcasm. Why? Because Lennon and Dylan know that the part of them that writes the songs is not "them," not the personal self that is of such surpassing fascination to their boneheaded interrogators. Lennon and Dylan also know that the part of themselves that does the writing is too sacred, too precious, too fragile to be redacted into sound bites for the titillation of would-be idolators (who are themselves caught up in their own Resistance). — Steven Pressfield

The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality. — Steven Pressfield

What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out. — Steven Pressfield

The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it. He — Steven Pressfield

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

Don't think. Act. We can always revise and revisit once we've acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act. — 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

Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. — Steven Pressfield

Tutors are usually shaggy, ill-groomed junior dons who smoke and drink to excess and never leave their rooms except for illicit sexual liaisons or to replenish their stocks of tobacco and spirits. A — Steven Pressfield

Last of terror's stages, Selene had tutored Europa and me, is busyness. — 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

preparation, order, patience, endurance, acting in the face of fear and failure — 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

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it. — 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

Start before you're ready. Good things happen when we start before we're ready. — Steven Pressfield

Egyptians cannot believe Israelis are all — Steven Pressfield

Colonel L., in whose eyes I was a first-rate Riot Acter or, worse, an intellectual - in his phrase, "someone who reads books" - the most damning appraisal that could be made of a junior lieutenant. — Steven Pressfield

Making a judgment, taking a stand and then acting against an injustice or acting to support excellence is the stuff of the everyman hero. If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid "judgments," you'll find that you have nothing to say. — Steven Pressfield

Nothing fires the warrior's heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one's own bowels or guts but from one's discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions. — Steven Pressfield

You have never tasted freedom, friend," Dienekes spoke, "or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel. — 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

Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page. — Steven Pressfield

BOOK TWO COMBATING RESISTANCE — Steven Pressfield

Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. — Steven Pressfield

The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will fell when you finally do it. — 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

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

Making yourself a corporation (or just thinking of yourself in that way) reinforces the idea of professionalism because it separates the artist-doing-the-work from the will-and-consciousness-running-the-show. — Steven Pressfield

Tomorrow morning the critic will be gone, but the writer will still be there facing the blank page. Nothing matters but that he keep working. — 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

If you're are paralyzed with fear it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do. — 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

Get your idea down on paper. You can always tweak it later. — Steven Pressfield

The concept in all these environments seems to be that one needs to complete his healing before he is ready to do his work. — Steven Pressfield

Nobody knew I was done. Nobody cared. But I knew. I felt like a dragon I'd been fighting all my life had just dropped dead at my feet and gasped out its last sulfuric breath.

Rest in peace, motherfucker. — Steven Pressfield

I will gladly shell out $24.95 or $9.99 or 99 cents on iTunes to read or see or listen to the 24-karat treasure that you have refined from your pain and your vision and your imagination. I need it. We all do. We're struggling here in the trenches. That beauty, that wisdom, those thrills and chills, even that mindless escape on a rainy October afternoon - I want it. Put me down for it. — Steven Pressfield

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

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts. — Steven Pressfield

THE MAGIC OF MAKING A START Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now. — Steven Pressfield

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. — Steven Pressfield

The more important a call to action is to our soul's evolution, the more Resistance we will feel about answering it. But to yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. — Steven Pressfield

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist. — Steven Pressfield

We're wrong if we think we're the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance. — Steven Pressfield

faces at a dead run. Yet never have my heart and — Steven Pressfield

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong. — Steven Pressfield