Top 180 Carlos Castaneda Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Your problem is that you think you have time.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Quotes About Thinking, Life Is Short Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes

2. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Short Quotes About Life, Perspective Quotes, Personal Responsibility Quotes, Being Happy Quotes, Positive Mindset Quotes

3. “In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Live Life Quotes, Quotes for Better Decisions, Doubt Quotes, Regret Quotes

4. “The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Warrior Quotes

5. “A warrior never worries about his fear.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Warrior Quotes, Worry Quotes

6. “Only a warrior can survive the path of knowledge because the art of the warrior is to balance the pain of being a man with the wonder of being a man.”

— Carlos Castaneda

7. “A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Warrior Quotes, Judging Quotes

8. “Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.”

— Carlos Castaneda

9. “Self importance is man’s greatest enemy.”

— Carlos Castaneda

10. “When you need an answer, look over your left shoulder and ask your death.”

— Carlos Castaneda

11. “Self-importance requires spending most of one’s life offended by something or someone.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Investing Quotes

12. “The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Quotes About Balance

13. “Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Warrior Quotes

14. “A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Quotes About Laughing

15. “The ego is like a tired old dog. We can never kill it, so put it out on the back porch, let it rest there, and step around it.”

— Carlos Castaneda

16. “If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.”

— Carlos Castaneda

17. “Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus.”

— Carlos Castaneda

18. “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.”

— Carlos Castaneda

19. “Never take a path that has no heart in it. You can’t lose if your heart is in your work, but you can’t win if your heart is not in it.”

— Carlos Castaneda

20. “We don’t need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful.”

— Carlos Castaneda

21. “I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I have no thoughts, so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.”

— Carlos Castaneda

22. “I’m never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don’t feel that way any longer.”

— Carlos Castaneda

23. “The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.”

— Carlos Castaneda

24. “Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.”

— Carlos Castaneda

25. “For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length – and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.”

— Carlos Castaneda

26. “Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Path Quotes

27. “Things don’t change, only the way you look at them.”

— Carlos Castaneda

28. “It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Energy Quotes

29. “Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

— Carlos Castaneda

30. “A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.”

— Carlos Castaneda

31. “Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.”

— Carlos Castaneda

32. “Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.”

— Carlos Castaneda

33. “In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamens call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”

— Carlos Castaneda

34. “A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.”

— Carlos Castaneda

35. “The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious because he has everything to gain.”

— Carlos Castaneda

36. “All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!”

— Carlos Castaneda

37. “The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.”

— Carlos Castaneda

38. “Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

— Carlos Castaneda

39. “Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self.”

— Carlos Castaneda

40. “Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.”

— Carlos Castaneda

41. “A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.”

— Carlos Castaneda

42. “Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

— Carlos Castaneda

43. “An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that’s all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.”

— Carlos Castaneda

44. “Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.”

— Carlos Castaneda

45. “We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”

— Carlos Castaneda

46. “A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Quotes About Acting

47. “For a human being, sadness is as powerful as terror. Sadness makes a warrior shed tears of blood.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Sadness Quotes

48. “The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.”

— Carlos Castaneda

49. “We have to balance the lineality of the known universe with the nonlineality of the unknown universe.”

— Carlos Castaneda

Featured in: Quotes About Balance

50. “Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow, you must not stay with it under any circumstances.”

— Carlos Castaneda