Steven Pressfield famous quotes

Don't cheat the world of your contribution. Give it what you've got.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Inspirational #Giving #World

I had always been an enthusiastic reader of stuff about ancient Greece. I would read Herodotus and Thucydides just for fun.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Fun #Stuff #Ancient

Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Destiny #Never Forget #Moments

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

#Art #War #Self

Are you paralyzed with fear? That’s a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember one rule of thumb: the more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Motivational #Self #Doubt

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Matter #Opinion #Screws

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Perseverance #Teacher #Fear

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Book #Acquaintance #Sooner Or Later

Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Art #Selfish #Creativity

The problem I've always discovered in my own work when this kind of thing happens when you hit the wall is there's almost always a reason. You've almost always made a mistake in the initial conception of the project. You misapprehended something or you thought something would work and now you're three quarters on the way through and you see that it doesn't work.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Wall #Mistake #Three

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Real #Artist #Self

One thing I've found in any project is almost universally about three quarters of the way through - or maybe a little father, maybe seventh eighths on the way through - any project will explode.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Father #Three #Littles

A child has no trouble believing the unbelievable, nor does the genius or the madman. It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Children #Believe #Heart

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

#Thinking #Years #Three

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 the men must produce victory on will alone.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Real #Army #Men

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Voice #Shapes #Resistance

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Men #Brave #Arms

Resistance in my experience always kicks in when you're trying to move from a lower level to a higher level or to identify with a braver part of yourself or your higher nature. So it's that negative repelling force. It's kind of the dragon that we have to slay every day if we're artists or entrepreneurs.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Moving #Artist #Dragons

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Fear #Warrior #Artist

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

#Mum #Superstitious

This man has conquered the world! What have you done?" The philosopher replied without an instant's hesitation, "I have conquered the need to conquer the world.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Men #Done #World

When a novelist or screenwriter is looking for a subject, the element he's seeking is conflict. Conflict makes drama. Conflict produces great characters and memorable scenes. So war is a natural topic.
-- Steven Pressfield

#War #Drama #Character

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

#Horse #Should

He who whets his steel, whets his courage
-- Steven Pressfield

#Military #Steel

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

#Jobs #Shapes #Life Is

Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Resistance #Heard

A contemporary or near-future book is much harder because you can't fake the facts. There are people alive who know much more than you do about the subject. You have to really have your research together - and of course no one can know everything about a topic.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Book #People #Fake

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

#Soul #Important #Thumbs

The great thing about writing about the ancient Spartans or Athenians is that so much knowledge is no longer extant that no one, except maybe a Cambridge or Oxford don, can call you out and prove you wrong.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Writing #Oxford #Ancient

Ambition, I have come to believe, is the most primal and sacred and fundament of our being. To feel ambition and to act upon it is to embrace the unique calling of our souls. Not to act upon that ambition is to turn our backs on ourselves and on the reason for our existence.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Believe #Ambition #Unique

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

#Artist #Faces #Demon

The most pernicious aspect of procrastination is that it can become a habit. We don't just put off our lives today; we put them off till our deathbed. Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Motivational #Procrastination #Destiny

I love memoirs, particularly obscure ones because the writer is usually a regular guy just telling what happened to him and to his friends. What these tales lack in artfulness they make up for in passion and authenticity. For a writer of fiction, they are solid gold. I have stolen so much from memoirs it's ridiculous.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Passion #Guy #Gold

The amateur tweets. The pro works.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Tweet

There's a phrase you hear in Israel: "We're not Jews, we're Israelis." What that means is that the stereotype we're familiar with here in the States of the Diaspora Jew, i.e. Jews in America or Europe or Russia, etc. does not fit at all with the reality of the homegrown "sabras" of Israel.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Mean #Reality #Russia

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

#Passion #Conquer #Wells

Right now with blogs and the flood of internet access, a multitude of aspiring writers think they're ready for prime time. They're not. Be great. Read. Write. Bust your ass. Learn and find your voice. As hard as you think it is, it's a hundred times harder.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Writing #Thinking #Voice

Don't prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Enemy #Preparation #Brain

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

#Numbers #Dvds #Quality

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Artist #Self #Rejection

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

#Reading #Tablets #Next

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

#Business #Believe #Clueless

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

#Self #Enemy #Opponents

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

#Believe #Artist #Effort

The professional dedicates himself to mastering technique not because he believes technique is a substitute for inspiration but because he wants to be in possession of the full arsenal of skills when inspiration does come.  The professional is sly.  He knows that by toiling beside the front door of technique, he leaves room for genius to enter by the back.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Believe #Inspiration #Doors

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

#Inspiration #Artist #Example

Courage is inseparable from love and leads to what may arguably be the noblest of all warrior virtues: selflessness.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Warrior #May #Selflessness

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 keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Real #Writing #Secret

The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Hate #Done #Critics

Those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Masters

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

#Real #Self #Scared

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

#Believe #Book #Inspiration

Our job in this lifetime 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. If we were born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter. If we were born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother. 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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Mother #Jobs #Children

When we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen... Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Serendipity #Causes #Unseen

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Running #Destiny #Self

The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying. Why is this important? Because when we sit down day after day and keep grinding, something mysterious starts to happen. A process is set in motion by which, inevitably and infallibly, heaven comes to our aid. Unseen forces enlist in our cause; serendipity reinforces our purpose.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Art #Heaven #Serendipity

Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Self #Long #Mastery

Do you love your idea? Does it feel right on instinct? Are you willing to bleed for it?
-- Steven Pressfield

#Love You #Ideas #Doe

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Morning #Pages #Matter

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

#Pay #Succeed #Culture

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Goodbye #Nice #People

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

#Lying #Believe

We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Want #Left Behind #Our Future

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

#Crazy #Self #Authentic Self

Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Dumb #Stubborn #Quitting

Start before you’re ready.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Inspirational #Work #Inspiration

Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?
-- Steven Pressfield

#Earth #Lasts #Persons

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Believe #Warrior #Artist

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.
-- Steven Pressfield

#Love #Dream #Work