A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Action
A warrior never worries about his fear.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Attitude, Worry, Fear
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, Warrior, Death
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: Change, Creativity, To Be Born Everyday
All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy—it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Vision, Joy, Purpose
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, Courage, Warrior
A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, 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: Warrior, Courage, Regret, Challenges, Disappointment, Life, Knowledge, Remorse
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
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
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: Friendship, People, Warrior, Love
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
A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior
The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: People, Attitude, Warrior
The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Self-reliance, Illusion, Perception, Attitude, Confidence
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: Attitude, Perception, Challenges, Warrior
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: Fear, Growth, Knowledge, Courage
The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious because he has everything to gain.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Warrior
Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, Doubt
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: People, Friendship, Warrior, Love
A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Vision, Purpose, Bravery, Life
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, Warrior, Life, Attitude
Learn to see, and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Discovery, Vision
No person is important enough to make me angry.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Anger
Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Learning, Wisdom
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: Growth, Warrior, Courage
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, Spirit, War, 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: Warrior, Vision, Purpose, Fear, Heart
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: Warrior, Growth, Courage
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