Steven Pressfield Quotes

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.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

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.

Research can become Resistance. We want to work, not prepare to work.

Start before you’re ready.

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

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.

You are a writer when you tell yourself you are. No one else's opinion matters. Screw them. You are when you say you are.

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.

Every artist has to face his own demons and evolve his own method of working.

Resistance’s goal is not to wound or disable. Resistance aims to kill

Next morning I went over to Paul’s for coffee and told him I had finished. “Good for you,” he said without looking up. “Start the next one today.

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

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

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.

The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.

He who whets his steel, whets his courage

Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.

When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling - meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves.

Every sun casts a shadow, and genius's shadow is Resistance.

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

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

It’s better to be in the arena, getting stomped by the bull, than to be up in the stands or out in the parking lot.

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

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.

When we conquer our fears, we discover a boundless, bottomless, inexhaustible well of passion.

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.

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

The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Seeking support from friends and and family is like having people gathered around at your deathbed. It's nice, but when the ship sails, all they can do is stand on the dock waving goodbye.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.

Fear doesn't go away. The battle must be fought anew every day.

We show up. We do our best. Good things happen.

The last thing we want is to remain as we are.

Don't prepare, do. Don't let Resistance sucker you into wasting months on background, foundation, planning. All that can come later.

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

Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.

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

Fame Imperishable and glory that will never die -- that is what we march for!

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

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.

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

Figure out what scares you the most and do that first.

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.

Resistance really takes the shape, for me, in voices in my head telling me why I can't do something or why I should put it off for another day, procrastinate for another day.

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

Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional crazy heart.

It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life.

I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.