Steven Pressfield: Trending quotes

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

Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

“Do you love your country? […] This man, with his life, has preserved it. Bear him with honor.”

Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

“Fear saps passion.”

Steven Pressfield

Do the Work

“Both men were aware of the imperative held by all warrior races to serve honor before survival.”

Orontes (Handing over Xeones' corpse to Athenian civilians) p. 430
Gates of Fire (1998)

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

Mother Bones (Narrator) p. 10
Last of the Amazons (2002)

Steven Pressfield book The War of Art

Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 50

“Nothing relieves Irish despair. The Irishman's complaint lies not with his circumstance, which might be rendered brilliant by labour or luck, but with injustice of existence itself. Death! How could a benevolent Deity gift us with life, only to set such a cruel term upon it? Irish despair knows no remedy. Love fades; fame is fleeting. The only cures are booze and sentiment. That's why the Irish are such noble drunks and glorious poets. No one sings like the Irish or mourns like them. Why? Because they're angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”

“Among the ways the Spartans differ from other peoples is this. When an ally in distress applies to them for aid, they alone dispatch neither troops nor treasure but a solitary commander, a general. This officer alone, assuming charge of the beleagured forces, is sufficiant, they feel, to turn affairs about and produce victory. This as the world knows is what happened at Syracuse.”

Zachary Stein, p. 27
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield book Tides of War

Polemides, p. 162
Tides of War (2000)

“The greatest commanders never issue orders. Rather, they compel by their own acts and virtue the emulation of those they command. The great champions throw leadership back on you. They make you answer: Who am I? What do I seek? What is the meaning of my existence in this life?”

Steven Pressfield book The Profession

Gent, p. 2
The Profession (2011)

“I approve of all you say, gentlemen. The fleet's needs are many and urgent. One, however, must take precedence. This item the men need before all, and we must get it for them without fail and without deferral. We must get the men a victory.”

Steven Pressfield book Tides of War

Alcibades, p. 245
Tides of War (2000)

“I could be counted upon to perform the mission they had assigned me, or, if that was unworkable, to improvise and turn my men's exertions upon a secondary undertaking as good as or better than the first.”

“It is a terrible thing to be a king, especially a great one, for one must serve ideals of the spirit at the price of lovers of flesh and blood. Who profits from a king's fidelity save generations a thousand years unborn, and which of his works will they recall at that remove, or care?”

Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the first criteria for an able commander
Killing Rommel (2008)

“A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and the chiseled squint of the vetern.”

Damon p. 221
Last of the Amazons (2002)

“Straight to her face advanced the Athenian Lykos, and it must be said that it took no slender spirit for him to do so, such was the light of slaughter in the Amazon's eyes. "What do you call this, thou savage!" The prince gestured to the broth irrigating the walls and floors of the canyon. "Are these God's footsteps?" Is this the 'path of holiness' in which your race treads?" Theseus hastened forward, reining-in at his countryman's shoulder. "This is not war," Lykos bellowed to Antiope. "It is butchery!" Theseus sought to speak, as if to offer extenuation for the actions of the Amazons. Lykos cut him off with a curse. "You cannot defend the indefensible!"”

Damon p. 91
Last of the Amazons (2002)

“At Athens and Athens alone, a new stamp of person was being born, neither baron nor yeoman, but a man of the city. A citizen.”

Lykos p. 153
Last of the Amazons (2002)

“One act I will never stand for is leaving our fellows behind. Bugger military protocol, or lofty notions of honour. I can't live with running out on a pal, and I won't let any of you do it either.”

Father p. 87
Last of the Amazons (2002)

“Why have I nominated you, lady, to bear up beneath this most terrible of trials, you and your sisters of the Three Hundred? Because you can.”

Major Mike Mallory, p. 60
Killing Rommel (2008)

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

Leonides p. 427
Gates of Fire (1998)

Steven Pressfield book The War of Art

Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 13

“These are armed enemy, who have hastened to this site with one object only: to take the lives of my comanions and me. I must take theirs first. No truth could be plainer. Yet at the same time nothing can alter the fact that beneath the fascist insignia of their uniforms, these men are fathers, husbands, sons.”

“This aspis was my father's and his father's before him. I have sworn before God to die before another man took this from my hand. He crossed to the ranks of Thespians, to a man, an obscure warrior among them. Into the fellow's grasp he placed the shield.”

Richmond Chapman, p. 204
Killing Rommel (2008)