Quotes from Steven Pressfield

The more resistance you experience, the more important your unmanifested art/project/enterprise is to you - and the more gratification you will fell when you finally do it.

As all born teachers, he was primarily a student.

Persian envoy our arrows will black out the sun... Dienekes of the Spartans..Good, then we'll fight in the shade.

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.

You know, Hitler wanted to be an artist. At eighteen he took his inheritance, seven hundred kronen, and moved to Vienna to live and study... Ever see one of his paintings? Neither have I. Resistance beat him. Call it overstatement but I'll say it anyway: it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to face a blank square of canvas.

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

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now. — W. H. Murray

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.

Stay stupid. Follow your unconventional, crazy heart.

The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned to find masters to govern over them.

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

Here's another test. Of any activity you do, aks yourself: If I were the last person on earth, would I still do it?

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.

I'm keenly aware of the Principle of Priority, which states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.

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

she (the artist, the writer) doesn't wait for inspiration, she acts in the anticipation of its apparition.

Habit will be your champion. When you train the mind to think one way and one way only, when you refuse to allow it to think in another, that will produce great strength in battle.

Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work.

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

To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be.

Like a magnetized needle floating on a surface of oil, Resistance will unfailingly point to true North - meaning that calling or action it most wants to stop us from doing. We can use this. We can use it as a compass. We can navigate by Resistance, letting it guide us to that calling or action that we must follow before all others.

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. Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact the addiction instead of embracing the calling. Why? Because to follow a calling requires work. It's hard. It hurts. It demands entering the pain-zone of effort, risk, and exposure.

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.

We feed it [Resistance] with power by our fear of it. Master that fear and we conquer Resistance.