Steven Pressfield Quotes

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

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

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

The Muse honors the working stiff.

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

Fear doesn’t go away. The warrior and the artist live by the same code of necessity, which dictates that the battle must be fought anew every day.

Always attack. Even in defense, attack. The attacking arm possesses the
initiative and thus commands the action. To attack makes men brave; to defend
makes them timorous.

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

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 a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

The working artist will not tolerate trouble in her life because she knows trouble prevents her from doing her work. The working artist banishes from her world all sources of trouble. She harnesses the urge for trouble and transforms it in her work.

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

When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul's call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.