“That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.” – Steven Pressfield
73 Steven Pressfield Quotes
- “Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.”
2. “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.”
3. “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”
4. “If you’re are paralyzed with fear it’s a good sign. It shows you what you have to do.”
5. “Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.”
6. “The last thing we want is to remain as we are.”
7. “Our greatest fear is fear of success.”
8. “Start before you’re ready.”
9. “The payoff for a life of adversity is freedom.”
10. “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.”
Steven Pressfield Quotes on Resistance
11. “Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
12. “The enemy is Resistance.”
13. “The awakening an artist must be ruthless, not only with herself but with others.”
14. “A warrior culture trains for adversity. Luxury and ease are the goals advertised to the civilian world.”
15. “To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.”
16. “Resistance gets us to plunge into a project with an overambitious and unrealistic timetable for its completion.”
17. “Every virtue that reaches the exaggeration, is becoming a defect”
18. “The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.”
19. “Resistance is the most toxic force on the planet.”
20. “When inspiration touches talent, she gives birth to truth and beauty.”
21. “Of any activity you do, ask yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?”
22. “Don’t prepare. Begin.”
Inspirational Steven Pressfield Quotes on Fear
23. “The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome.”
24. “He who whets his steel, whets his courage”
25. “Resistance has no conscience.”
26. “Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled. But it can be felt.”
27. “The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.”
28. “We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.”
29. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”
30. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness.”
Inspirational Steven Pressfield Quotes
31. “The truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery.”
32. “That was when I realized I had become a pro. I had not yet had a success. But I had had a real failure.”
33. “Do we have to stare death in the face to make us stand up and confront Resistance?”
34. “Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
35. “The payoff of living in the past or the future is you never have to do your work in the present.”
36. “Turning pro is like kicking a drug habit or stopping drinking. It’s a decision, a decision to which we must re-commit every day.”
37. “The professional loves her work. She is invested in it wholeheartedly. But she does not forget that the work is not her.”
38. “Remember our 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.”
39. “The best and only thing that one artist can do for another is to serve as an example and an inspiration.”
40. “We’re wrong if we think we’re the only ones struggling with Resistance. Everyone who has a body experiences Resistance.”
Famous Steven Pressfield Quotes
41. “Anything that draws attention to ourselves through pain-free or artificial means is a manifestation of Resistance.”
42. “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.”
43. “Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us.”
44. “The sure sign of an amateur is he has a million plans and they all start tomorrow.”
45. “Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.”
46. “It’s only you and I, with our big brains and our tiny hearts, who doubt and overthink and hesitate.”
47. “I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem. I can procrastinate dealing with my problem of procrastinating thinking about my procrastination problem.”
48. “When deliberating, think in campaigns and not battles; in wars and not
campaigns; in ultimate conquest and not wars.”
49. “Resistance is directly proportional to love. If you’re feeling massive Resistance, the good news is that it means there’s tremendous love there too.”
Motivational Steven Pressfield Quotes
50. “The hero wanders. The hero suffers. The hero returns. You are that hero.”
51. “When we sit down each day and do our work, power concentrates around us .”
52. “Resistance’s goal is not to would or disable. Resistance aims to kill.”
53. “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance.”
54. “When we raise our game aesthetically, we elevate it morally and spiritually as well.”
55. “When we drug ourselves to blot out our soul’s call, we are being good Americans and exemplary consumers.”
56. “There’s no mystery to turning pro. It’s a decision brought about by an act of will.”
57. “A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.”
58. “Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. resistance is the enemy within.”
59. “Nothing is as empowering as real-world validation, even if it’s for failure.”
60. “The enemy is in you, but it is not you.”
Famous Steven Pressfield Quotes
61. “The clash is epic and internal, between the ego and the Self, and the stakes are our lives.”
62. “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.”
63. “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.”
64. “The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell whether he knows it or not.”
65. “Instead of applying self-knowledge, self-discipline, delayed gratification and hard work, we simply consume a product.”
66. “The professional cannot allow the actions of others to define his reality.”
67. “We can always revise and revisit once we’ve acted. But we can accomplish nothing until we act.”
68. “The pain of being human is that we’re all angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”
69. “Some heavy shit is coming down, brothers, and we’re going to go through it.”
70. “Fear conquers fear. This is how we Spartans do it, counterpoising to fear of death a greater fear: that of dishonor. Of exclusion from the pack.”
71. “The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.”
72. “There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny.”
73. “Resistance has no strength of its own. Every ounce of juice it possesses comes from us. We feed it with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.”
Steven Pressfield is an American author of historical fiction, nonfiction, and screenplays, was born on September 1, 1943. His works include the 1995 novel The Legend of Bagger Vance and the nonfiction book The War of Art.
In addition to writing advertising copy, Pressfield worked as a teacher, a tractor-trailer driver, a bartender, an oilfield roustabout, a mental hospital attendant, a fruit picker in Washington State, a screenwriter, and an attendant. In his 2002 book The War of Art, he describes his struggles to support himself as a writer, including the time he was homeless and living in the back of his car.
After being published in 1995, Pressfield’s first book, The Legend of Bagger Vance, which was loosely based on the Bhagavad Gita, was adapted into a 2000 movie with Will Smith, Charlize Theron, and Matt Damon.
The Spartans and the Battle of Thermopylae are the subject of his second novel, Gates of Fire (1998). It is covered at the Marine Corps Basic School at Quantico, the United States Military Academy, and the United States Naval Academy.
Together with his agent Shawn Coyne, Pressfield established the publishing house Black Irish Books in 2012.