“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”
Variant: Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Steven Pressfield70
United States Marine 1943Related quotes
Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland
Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)
Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series
Paraphrased variant: We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.
Harvard address (2008)
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”
Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …
“We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.”
James Redfield book The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Source: The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Foreword (January 1960)
You Learn by Living (1960)
Context: One's philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes. In stopping to think through the meaning of what I have learned, there is much that I believe intensely, much I am unsure of. In the long run, we shape our lives and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And, the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
“There is no such thing as destiny. We ourselves shape our lives.”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
“We must all do theatre – to find out who we are, and to discover who we could become.”
Augusto Boal (1931–2009) Brazilian writer
Aesthetics of the Oppressed (2006)
Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872) German philosopher and anthropologist
Lecture I, Occasion and Context <br class="br"> Lectures on the Essence of Religion http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/feuerbach/works/lectures/index.htm (1851)