Steven Pressfield Quotes

187 quotes in 2377 categories

• Don't cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you've got.
• The essence of professionalism is the focus upon the work and its demands, while we are doing it, to the exclusion of all else.
• The professional does not permit himself to become hidebound within one incarnation, however comfortable or successful. Like a transmigrating soul, he shucks his outworn body…
• The Spartans say that any army may win while it still has legs under it; the real test comes when all strength is fled and…
• On the field of The Self stand a knight and a dragon. You are the knight. Resistance is the dragon.
• The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
• 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!"…
• If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don't do it, you not only hurt yourself,…
• 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…
• F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back…
• 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…
• The only intercourse possible between the knight and the dragon is battle.
• Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill
• Our enemy is not lack of preparation; it’s not the difficulty of the project, or the state of the marketplace or the emptiness of our…
• Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.
• Start before you’re ready. Good things happen when we start before we’re ready.
• Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.
• Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think you’ve lost your passion, or that…
• When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.
• Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.

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