542 Quotes by Steven Pressfield

The habits and addictions of the amateur are conscious or unconscious self-inflicted wounds. Their payoff is incapacity. When we take our M1903 Springfield and blow a hole in our foot, we no longer have to face the real fight of our lives, which is to become who we are and to realize our destiny and our calling.

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.

The American people... have had enough of sacrificing their sons and daughters in the name of some illusory world order; they want someone else’s sons and daughters to bear the burden. The American people are willing to pay for this privilege, in cash and in the circumscription of their own liberty.

The professional knows when he has fallen short of his own standards. He will murder his darlings without hesitation, if that’s what it takes to stay true to the goddess and to his own expectations of excellence.

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.

What could be more natural for this man than to draw to his bosom all with whom he shared that time, even his foes? Perhaps his foes more than any.

The role of the officer, in my experience, is nothing grander than to stand sentinel over himself and his men, towards the end of keeping them from forgetting who they are and what their objective is, how to get there, and what equipment they’re supposed to have when they arrive.

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.

Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.