The Fire from Within Quotes

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to withstand the pressure of the unknowable.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“He went on to say that conclusions arrived at through reasoning had very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives. Hence, the countless examples of people who have the clearest convictions and yet act diametrically against them time and time again, and have as the only explanation for their behavior the idea that to err is human.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“Remember what I’ve told you,” he said. “Don’t count on emotional realizations. Let your assemblage point move first, then years later have the realization.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“roomy.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“I vociferously disagreed with him. I told him that in my opinion tyrants can only render their victims helpless or make them as brutal as they themselves are. I pointed out that countless studies had been done on the effects of physical and psychological torture on such victims.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“Because will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“One of the hardest things to acknowledge is that awareness can be manipulated.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“Don Juan had told me that there is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there is no sobriety, no kindness. Wisdom without kindness, he said, and knowledge without sobriety are useless.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“He further said that to be a peerless nagual, one has to love freedom, and one has to have supreme detachment. He explained that what makes the warrior’s path so very dangerous is that it is the opposite of the life situation of modern man. He said that modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.”
― Carlos Castaneda, Fire from Within

“One of the Greatest Forces in the Lives of Warriors is Fear. It Spurs them to Learn.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

“Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding to great size.”
― Carlos Castañeda, The Fire from Within