Top 380 Steven Pressfield Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “The payoff for a life of adversity is freedom.”

— Steven Pressfield

252. “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 artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell.”

— Steven Pressfield

253. “As artists and professionals, it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture.”

— Steven Pressfield

254. “It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”

— Steven Pressfield

255. “When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.”

— Steven Pressfield

256. “I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.”

— Steven Pressfield

257. “Why does Zeus send prodigies to earth? For the same reason he makes a comet streak across the sky. To show not what has been done, but what can be.”

— Steven Pressfield

258. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.”

— Steven Pressfield

259. “What finally convinced me to go ahead was simply that I was so unhappy not going ahead. I was developing symptoms. As soon as I sat down and began, I was okay.”

— Steven Pressfield

260. “I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now.” –.”

— Steven Pressfield

261. “A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.”

— Steven Pressfield

262. “All of a sudden I understood why I was so moody, neurotic, simultaneously paranoid and megalomaniac, mistrustful, uneasy, driven by ambition but paralyzed by guilt about my ambition, horny, obsessive, compulsive, obsessive-compulsive, not to mention shy, withdrawn, and dandruff-ridden. I was creative. All creative people were like that!”

— Steven Pressfield

263. “The writer is an infantryman. He knows that progress is measured in yards of dirt extracted from the enemy one day, one hour, one minute at a time and paid for in blood. The artist wears combat boots.”

— Steven Pressfield

264. “On our hero’s journey, we see, we experience, we suffer. We learn. On our hero’s journey, we acquire a history that is ours alone. It’s a secret history, a private history, a personal history. No one has it but us. No one knows it but us. This secret history is the most valuable possession we hold, or ever will hold. We will draw upon it for the rest of our lives.”

— Steven Pressfield

265. “What are we trying to heal, anyway? The athlete knows the day will never come when he wakes up pain-free. He has to play hurt. Remember, the part of us that we imagine needs healing is not the part we create from; that part is far deeper and stronger. The part we create from can’t be touched by anything our parents did, or society did. That part is unsullied, uncorrupted; soundproof, waterproof, and bulletproof. In fact, the more troubles we’ve got, the better and richer that part becomes.”

— Steven Pressfield

266. “The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and conviction where we are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I intend to live my life”?”

— Steven Pressfield

267. “I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem.”

— Steven Pressfield

268. “When we experience panic, it means that we’re about to cross a threshold. We’re poised on the doorstep of a higher plane.”

— Steven Pressfield

269. “Attention Deficit Disorder, Seasonal Affect Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder. These aren’t diseases, they’re marketing ploys. Doctors didn’t discover them, copywriters did. Marketing departments did. Drug companies did.”

— Steven Pressfield

270. “What happens when we turn pro is, we finally listen to that still, small voice inside our heads. At last we find the courage to identify the secret dream or love or bliss that we have known all along was our passion, our calling, our destiny.”

— Steven Pressfield

271. “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.”

— Steven Pressfield

272. “Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies.”

— Steven Pressfield

273. “What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had, until then, been afraid to embrace and to live out.”

— Steven Pressfield

274. “Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions.”

— Steven Pressfield

275. “If tomorrow morning by some stroke of magic every dazed and benighted soul woke up with the power to take the first step toward pursuing his or her dreams, every shrink in the directory would be out of business.”

— Steven Pressfield

276. “Instead we are tapped into an unquenchable, undepletable, inexhaustible source of wisdom, consciousness, companionship. Yeah, we lose friends. But we find friends too, in places we never thought to look. And they’re better friends, truer friends. And we’re better and truer to them.”

— Steven Pressfield

277. “Henry Fonda was still throwing up before each stage performance, even when he was seventy-five. In other words, 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

278. “What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop?”

— Steven Pressfield

279. “The amateur allows his worth and identity to be defined by others. The amateur craves third-party validation. The amateur is tyrannized by his imagined conception of what is expected of him. He is imprisoned by what he believes he ought to think, how he ought to look, what he ought to do, and who he ought to be.”

— Steven Pressfield

280. “It’s okay to be an introvert, to seek out the quiet corners at a cocktail party, to care about quality, to have your mood be affected by your surroundings.”

— Steven Pressfield

281. “Subject is deeper than topic. It’s not “what it’s about,” it’s what it’s really about.”

— Steven Pressfield

282. “There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.”

— Steven Pressfield

283. “This is the other secret that real artists know and wannabe writers don’t. When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us. The Muse takes note of our dedication. She approves. We have earned favor in her sight. When we sit down and work, we become like a magnetized rod that attracts iron filings. Ideas come. Insights accrete.”

— Steven Pressfield

284. “The professional knows that Resistance is like a telemarketer; if you so much as say hello, you’re finished.”

— Steven Pressfield

285. “Leonidas’s and Dienekes’ quips draw the individual out of his private terror and yoke him to the group.”

— Steven Pressfield

286. “Maybe it’s less threatening to believe that our beloved spouse is worthy to live out his or her unlived life, while we are not.”

— Steven Pressfield

287. “He is on a mission. He will not tolerate disorder. He eliminates chaos from his world in order to banish it from his mind. He wants the carpet vacuumed and the threshold swept, so the Muse may enter and not soil her gown.”

— Steven Pressfield

288. “The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one’s existence. An illness, a cross to bear. Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself, a shadow version of the real creative act the victim is avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition.”

— Steven Pressfield

289. “Many artists are addicts, and vice versa. Many are artists in one breath and addicts in another. What’s the difference? The addict is the amateur; the artist is the professional.”

— Steven Pressfield

290. “The professional arms himself with patience, not only to give the stars time to align in his career, but to keep himself from flaming out in each individual work. He knows that any job, whether it’s a novel or a kitchen remodel, takes twice as long as he thinks and costs twice as much. He accepts that. He recognizes it as reality. The.”

— Steven Pressfield

291. “The sign of the amateur is overglorification of and preoccupation with the mystery.”

— Steven Pressfield

292. “When a warrior fights not for himself, but for his brothers, when his most passionately sought goal is neither glory nor his own life’s preservation, but to spend his substance for them, his comrades, not to abandon them, not to prove unworthy of them, then his heart truly has achieved contempt for death, and with that he transcends himself and his actions touch the sublime.”

— Steven Pressfield

293. “We are all meant to shine, as children do.”

— Steven Pressfield

294. “The professional gives an ear to criticism, seeking to learn and grow. But she never forgets that Resistance is using criticism against her on a far more diabolical level. Resistance enlists criticism to reinforce the fifth column of fear already at work inside the artist’s head, seeking to break her will and crack her dedication. The professional does not fall for this. Her resolution, before all others, remains: No matter what, I will never let Resistance beat me.”

— Steven Pressfield

295. “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

296. “The amateur has not mastered the technique of his art. Nor does he expose himself to judgment in the real world. If we show our poem to our friend and our friend says, “It’s wonderful, I love it,” that’s not real-world feedback, that’s our friend being nice to us. Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it’s for failure.”

— Steven Pressfield

297. “Individuals who are realized in their own lives almost never criticize others. If they speak at all, it is to offer encouragement. Watch yourself. Of all the manifestations of Resistance, most only harm ourselves. Criticism and cruelty harm others as well.”

— Steven Pressfield

298. “The professional loves it so much he dedicates his life to it. He commits full-time. That’s what I mean when I say turning pro. Resistance hates it when we turn pro.”

— Steven Pressfield

299. “Is it healthy for a society to entrust its defense to one percent of its population, while the other 99 percent thanks its lucky stars that it doesn’t have to do the dirty work?”

— Steven Pressfield

300. “The role of the officer, in my experience, is nothing grander than to stand sentinel over himself and his men, towards the end of keeping them from forgetting who they are and what their objective is, how to get there, and what equipment they’re supposed to have when they arrive.”

— Steven Pressfield