The Warrior Ethos Quotes

“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, The Warrior Ethos

“Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict—courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“A warrior culture trains for adversity. Luxury and ease are the goals advertised to the civilian world.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Alexander operated by the same principle. Let us conduct ourselves so that all men wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The will to victory may be demonstrated in places other than actual battle.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Be brave, my heart [wrote the poet and mercenary Archilochus]. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory, do not brag; in defeat, do not weep. The ancients resisted innovation in warfare because they feared it would rob the struggle of honor. King Agis was shown a new catapult, which could shoot a killing dart 200 yards. When he saw this, he wept. “Alas,” he said. “Valor is no more.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The payoff for a life of adversity is freedom.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Warrior cultures (and warrior leaders) enlist shame, not only as a counter to fear but as a goad to honor. The warrior advancing into battle (or simply resolving to keep up the fight) is more afraid of disgrace in the eyes of his brothers than he is of the spears and lances of the enemy.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“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, The Warrior Ethos

“Be brave, my heart [wrote the poet and mercenary Archilochus]. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing spears. Hold your ground. In victory, do not brag; in defeat, do not weep.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“No one is born with the Warrior Ethos, though many of its tenets appear naturally in young men and women of all cultures. The Warrior Ethos is taught. On the football field in Topeka, in the mountains of the Hindu Kush, on the lion-infested plains of Kenya and Tanzania. Courage is modeled for the youth by fathers and older brothers, by mentors and elders. It is inculcated, in almost all cultures, by a regimen of training and discipline. This discipline frequently culminates in an ordeal of initiation. The Spartan youth receives his shield, the paratrooper is awarded his wings, the Afghan boy is handed his AK-47.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they. —Plutarch Sayings of the Spartans”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful; honor and recognition in case of success.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“You’ve got the watches,” say the Taliban, “but we’ve got the time.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“We all fight wars—in our work, within our families and abroad in the wider world. Each of us struggles every day to define and defend our sense of purpose and integrity, to justify our existence on the planet and to understand, if only within our own hearts, who we are and what we believe in.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The warrior culture, on the other hand, values cohesion and obedience. The soldier or sailor is not free to do whatever he wants. He serves; he is bound to perform his duty.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Some heavy shit is coming down, brothers, and we’re going to go through it.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The Warrior Ethos evolved to counter the instinct of self-preservation.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Every warrior virtue proceeds from this—courage, selflessness, love of and loyalty to one’s comrades, patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“We want action. We seek to test ourselves. We want friends—real friends, who will put themselves on the line for us—and we want to do the same for them. We’re seeking some force that will hurl us out of our going-nowhere lives and into the real world, into genuine hazard and risk. We want to be part of something greater than ourselves, something we can be proud of. And we want to come out of the process as different (and better) people than we were when we went in. We want to be men, not boys. We want to be women, not girls.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The capacity for empathy and self-restraint will serve us powerfully, not only in our external wars but in the conflicts within our own hearts.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Let us conduct ourselves so that all men wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“The Bhagavad-Gita changes this. It takes the Warrior Ethos and elevates it to a loftier and nobler plane—the plane of the individual’s inner life, to his struggle to align himself with his own higher nature.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Leonidas’s and Dienekes’ quips draw the individual out of his private terror and yoke him to the group.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Honor is connected to many things, but one thing it’s not connected to is happiness. In honor cultures, happiness as we think of it—“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—is not a recognized good. Happiness in honor cultures is the possession of unsullied honor. Everything else is secondary. (18)”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Be brave, my heart [wrote the poet and mercenary Archilochus]. Plant your feet and square your shoulders to the enemy. Meet him among the man-killing”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“Every warrior virtue proceeds from this—courage, selflessness, love of and loyalty to one’s comrades, patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity. It all comes from the hunting band’s need to survive.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“to defend their children, their home soil and the values of their culture.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos

“honor.”
― Steven Pressfield, The Warrior Ethos