Steven Pressfield Quotes

On the field of The Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

She (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition. ~ Steven Pressfield

Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you're feeling massive Resistance, the good news is that it means there's tremendous love there too. ~ 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

We do not overidentify with our jobs. We may take pride in our work, we may stay late and come in on weekends, but we recognize that we are not our job descriptions. The amateur, on the other hand, overidentifies with his avocation, his artistic aspiration. He defines himself by it. He is a musician, a painter, a playwright. Resistance loves this. Resistance knows that the amateur composer will never write his symphony because he is overly invested in its success and overterrified of its failure. The amateur takes it so seriously it paralyzes him. ~ 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

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

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

I have always been a soldier. I have known no other life. The calling of arms, I have followed from boyhood. I have never sought another.

I have known lovers, sired offspring, competed in games, and committed outrages when drunk. I have vanquished empires, yoked continents, been crowned as an immortal before gods and men. But always I have been a soldier. ~ Steven Pressfield

A great trick that I learned having worked as a screenwriter for many years, the way screenwriters work, is they break the project down into three-act structure: Act 1, Act 2, Act 3. I think that is a great way to break down any project, whether it's a new business or anything at all. ~ Steven Pressfield

The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

Egyptians cannot believe Israelis are all ~ Steven Pressfield

Stay primitive. Trust the soup. Swing for the seats. ~ 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

We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don't know is how to be alone. We don't know how to be free individuals. The ~ Steven Pressfield

There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What ~ Steven Pressfield

The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her. ~ Steven Pressfield

In the hierarchy, the artist faces outward. Meeting someone new he asks himself, What can this person do for me? How can this person advance my standing? In the hierarchy, the artist looks up and looks down. The one place he can't look is that place he must: within. ~ Steven Pressfield

There's no mystery to turning pro. It's a decision brought about by an act of will. We make up our minds to view ourselves as pros and we do it. Simple as that. ~ Steven Pressfield

The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

The pain of being human is that we're all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh. ~ Steven Pressfield

The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration. ~ Steven Pressfield

The hardship of the exercises is intended less to strengthen the back than to toughen the mind. The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has its legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and the men must produce victory on will alone. ~ Steven Pressfield

Resistance's goal is not to would or disable. Resistance aims to kill. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

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

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

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

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

The hero's journey can take place on a battlefield or in a cubicle. We can live it out amid public clamor or in the soundless vault between our ears. The demons we are dueling are always the same. They are our own fears of becoming who we are. No one who has ever lived - or ever will - has a journey like ours. And yet our journey is universal. It is every woman's and every man's. ~ Steven Pressfield

We're never alone. As soon as we step outside the campfire glow, our Muse lights on our shoulder like a butterfly. The act of courage calls for infallibly that deeper part of ourselves that supports and sustains us. ~ 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

The amateur tweets. The pro works. ~ Steven Pressfield

If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business. ~ 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

Faced with our imminent extinction, Tom Laughlin believes, all assumptions are called into question. ~ 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

Fear saps passion. ~ Steven Pressfield

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. ~ Steven Pressfield

I believe in previous lives and the Muse - and that books and music exist before they are written and that they are propelled into material being by their own imperative to be born, via the offices of those willing servants of discipline, imagination and inspiration whom we call artists. ~ 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

Tolstoy had 13 kids and still wrote War & Peace. ~ Steven Pressfield

The more you love your art/ calling/ enterprise, the more important its accomplishment to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it. ~ 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

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

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

It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from. ~ Steven Pressfield

This is what I feared for Michael. That his generation, so strong, so well made, so bright and aware beyond its years, would compare itself to us in envy, envy of the clarity of our challenges and the brutish obviousness of our enemies. ~ Steven Pressfield

Memoirs of the North Africa campaign attest that, fierce and brutal as much of the fighting was, relations between individual enemies retained a quality of forbearance that seems, today, almost impossible to imagine. This ~ Steven Pressfield

The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones. ~ Steven Pressfield

Each man recalls not the enemy he hated, but the champion who engaged him with such valor. ~ 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

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 word amateur comes from the Latin root meaning "to love. ~ 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

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

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

Traditional publishers will be dominant, and they should be because they really do assure quality. But eBooks, which are huge already, are going to eclipse everything. They will save traditional publishing the way DVDs saved movie studios (for a while) and they'll greatly expand the number of readers. ~ Steven Pressfield

Our job, as souls on this mortal journey, is to shift the seat of our identity from the lower realm to the upper, from the ego to the Self. Art ~ Steven Pressfield

Long-term, we must begin to build our internal strengths. It isn't just skills like computer technology. It's the old-fashioned basics of self-reliance, self-motivation, self-reinforcement, self-discipline, self-command. ~ Steven Pressfield

Sweetest of all is liberty. This we have chosen and this we pay for. We have embraced the laws of Lykurgus, and they are stern laws. They have schooled us to scorn the life of leisure, which this rich land of ours would bestow upon us if we wished, and instead to enroll ourselves in the academy of discipline and sacrifice. Guided by these laws, our fathers for twenty generations have breathed the blessed air of freedom and have paid the bill in full when it was presented. We, their sons, can do no less. ~ 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

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

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

Resistance outwits the amateur with the oldest trick in the book: It uses his own enthusiasm against him. Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion. It knows we can't sustain that level of intensity. We will hit the wall. We will crash.
The professional, on the other hand, understands delayed gratification. He is the ant, not the grasshopper; the tortoise, not the hare ... The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it's a novel or kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

Dienekes says the mind is like a house with many rooms," he said. "There are rooms one must not go into. To anticipate one's death is one of those rooms. We must not allow ourselves even to think it. ~ Steven Pressfield

Every virtue that reaches the exaggeration, is becoming a defect ~ Steven Pressfield

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

He is prepared, each day, to confront his own self-sabotage. ~ Steven Pressfield

The hack is like the politician who consults the polls before he takes a position. He's a demagogue. He panders. It can pay off, being a hack. Given the depraved state of American culture, a slick dude can make millions being a hack. But even if you succeed, you lose, because you've sold out your Muse, and your Muse is you, the best part of yourself, where your finest and only true work comes from. I ~ Steven Pressfield

Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It's a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day. ~ 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

Look in your own heart. Unless I'm crazy, right now a still small voice is piping up, telling you as it has ten thousand times, the calling that is yours and yours alone. You know it. No one has to tell you. And unless I'm crazy, you're no closer to taking action on it than you were yesterday or will be tomorrow. You think Resistance isn't real? Resistance will bury you. ~ Steven Pressfield

As all born teachers, he was primarily a student. ~ Steven Pressfield

THE HUMAN CONDITION The Daily Show reported recently that scientists in Japan had invented a robot that is capable of recognizing its own reflection in a mirror. "When the robot learns to hate what it sees," said Jon Stewart, "it will have achieved full humanity. ~ Steven Pressfield

Ignorance and arrogance are the artist's and entrepreneur's indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no
idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway. ~ Steven Pressfield

Sometimes on Wednesday I'll read something that I wrote on Tuesday and I'll think, "This is crap. I hate it and I hate myself." Then I'll re-read the identical passage on Thursday. To my astonishment, it has become brilliant overnight. Ignore false negatives. Ignore false positives. Both are Resistance. Keep working. ~ Steven Pressfield

Art is a war - between ourselves and the forces of self-sabotage that would stop us from doing our work. The artist is a warrior. ~ Steven Pressfield

I wouldn't say "art" as much as "virtue," in the ancient Greek sense of "andreia" – manly action – or "arete," excellence. In my experience, Resistance kicks in any time we try to move ourselves from a lower plane to a higher. In other words, when we try to align with the better parts of our nature. This move can be creative (art) or physical (athletics) or it can be ethical, moral or spiritual. Have you ever tried to meditate? I have and it kicks my butt every time. Spiritual stuff is hard! But so is making "cold calls" if you're opening a new business. Somehow the principle is the same. We're trying to overcome our natural laziness, selfishness, sloppiness, etc. So I wouldn't say "art," I'd say "virtue. ~ Steven Pressfield

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance. ~ Steven Pressfield

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

What does Resistance feel like? First, unhappiness. We feel like hell. A low-grade misery pervades everything. We're bored, we're restless. We can't get no satisfaction. There's guilt but we can't put our finger on the source. We want to go back to bed; we want to get up and party. We feel unloved and unlovable. We're disgusted. We hate our lives. We hate ourselves. ~ 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

I'm superstitious. I keep mum while I'm working on something. ~ Steven Pressfield

If the upper realm is, as Plato suggested, the sphere of perfect love, truth, justice, and beauty, then the artist seeks to call down the magic of this world and to create, by dint of labor and luck, the closest-to-sublime simulacra of those qualities that he or she can. ~ Steven Pressfield

It's one thing to lie to ourselves. It's another thing to believe it. ~ Steven Pressfield

Its [Resistance] aim is to shove us away, distract us from doing our work. ~ Steven Pressfield

The artist cannot look to others to validate his efforts or his calling. If you don't believe me, ask Van Gogh, who produced masterpiece after masterpiece and never found a buyer in his whole life. ~ Steven Pressfield

Depression and anxiety may be real. But they can also be Resistance. When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers. We're doing exactly what TV commercials and pop materialist culture have been brainwashing us to do from birth. Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product. Many pedestrians have been maimed or killed at the intersection of Resistance and Commerce. ~ Steven Pressfield

plunge at once into matters as a Greek would, but offered first prayers for the free people's well-being. ~ Steven Pressfield

The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others. ~ 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

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

Reading is alive and well and will get more alive and more well. Reading on tablets (or whatever the next tech device will be) is the future - and the future is now. ~ Steven Pressfield