A cavalryman’s horse should be smarter than he is. But the horse must never be allowed to know this.
STEVEN PRESSFIELDResistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.
More Steven Pressfield Quotes
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Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.
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I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.
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Don’t prepare, do. Don’t let Resistance sucker you into wasting months on background, foundation, planning. All that can come later.
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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.
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Slay that dragon once, and he will never have power over you again.
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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.
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We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are… That we actually have the guts, the perserverance, the capacity… because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know.
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Resistance by definition is self-sabotage.
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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.
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When we see others beginning to live their authentic selves, it drives us crazy if we have not lived out our own.
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The professional does not wait for inspiration; he acts in anticipation of it.
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We will have to choose between the life we want for our future and the life we have left behind.
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Defeating Resistance is like giving birth. It seems absolutely impossible until you remember that women have been pulling it off successfully, with support and without, for fifty million years.
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As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.
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We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.
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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.
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The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.
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Every sun casts a shadow, and genius’s shadow is Resistance.
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The amateur tweets. The pro works.
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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.
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The professional respects his craft. He does not consider himself superior to it. He recognizes the contributions of those who have gone before him. He apprentices himself to them.
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Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude. It inculcates the lunch-pail state of mind that shows up for work despite rain or snow or dark of night and slugs it out day after day.
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Be too dumb to quit and too stubborn to back off.
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If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
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The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
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Resistance is greatest just before the finish line.
STEVEN PRESSFIELD