A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Win, Warrior, Wisdom
There’s no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim. Everything is filled to the brim, and everything is equal.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Experience, Warrior, Wisdom, Life
When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites—to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute assurance—there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Defeat, Growth, Courage, Fear
To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior’s spirit. It takes power to do that.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Power
Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Win, Warrior, Action
For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: People, Friendship, Love, Warrior
Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Vision, Purpose, Warrior, Fear, Heart
If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it—purge it, make it perfect—because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile … To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Growth, Warrior, Courage
An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that’s all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Friendship, Love, People, Warrior
The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Challenges, Warrior, Attitude, Perception
A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Death, Warrior
Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Remorse, Knowledge, Warrior, Regret, Disappointment, Courage, Challenges, Life
A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, Responsibility
All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That’s the warrior’s way.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Mystery, Warrior
It is important to do what you don’t know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: To Be Born Everyday, Creativity, Change
A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Power, Decide, Warrior, Courage
Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Learning
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Growth, Knowledge, Fear, Courage
A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Appreciation, Life, Warrior, Attitude
The spirit reveals itself to everyone with the same intensity and consistency, but only warriors are consistently attuned to such revelations.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Consistency, Warrior, Spirit, War
Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Friend, Warrior, Parents, Individuality, History, Courage
We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Responsibility, Attitude
There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn’t do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Courage, Warrior, Growth
If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Effort, Action, Warrior, Success, Stress
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Action
Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior’s indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Vision, Defeat
To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Growth, Courage, Warrior
A warrior-hunter knows that his death is waiting, and the very act he is performing now may well be his last battle on earth. He calls it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice advantage a warrior-hunter has over his fellow men. A warrior-hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Death, Knowledge, Warrior, Earth, People, Wisdom
When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Attitude
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