Quotes About Mastery

Two kinds of practice contribute to the illusion of natural talent. I call them "accidental practice" and "play as practice.

There's a real art to not learning how to play an instrument and being able to still play it.

Practicing slowly (combined with active listening) is the first concrete practice technique I've

You have to be careful about practicing, because we start to practice practicing. We need to practice performing.

Focus on mastering the music as deeply as you can, and worry less—or not at all if it's possible—about impressing others

I never practice. I always play.

When you know what something is, you have power over it.

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

In an interview with Charlie Parker, another jazz saxophone legend, Paul Desmond, asked Parker if his fantastic ability came as a result of practice, or from performing a lot. Parker said, I can't see where there's anything fantastic about it at all. I put quite a bit of study into the horn, that's true…. I used to put in at least from 11 to 15 hours a day…over three or four years.[1]

Experts who accumulated 10,000 hours of practice weren't trying to accumulate those hours; their focus was elsewhere, on the task at hand.

I got this," said Nix, raising her bokken.

Why be a king,when you can be a god?

All I wanted to do's be the Bruce Lee of loose-leaf.

It may look easy but making it look easy is all to do with skill.

I don't have technique because I never learnt any.

The man we call a specialist today was formerly called a man with a one-track mind.

A smooth sea never made a skilled mariner.

other words, she seems to ignore the fact that political participation presupposes access to culture and information, mastery of the tools of reflection, a certain availability of time and, above all, the satisfaction of socially determined needs.

Butler could kill you a hundred different ways without use of his armoury. Though I'm sure one would be quite sufficient.

Practise yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things and thence proceed to greater.

Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempest.

Men inflict injuries from hatred, jealousy or contempt, but the wise man masters all these passions by means of reason.