Steven Pressfield Quotes

"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. Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the first criteria for an able commander"

"I believe him, Dienekes. He's so fucking stupid, this is just the way he would skrew it up. Polynikes p. 371"

"I had always wondered what it felt like to die."

"The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death. p. 50"

"Bear your command with humility. Lead, do not condescend. Remember, these are great events and men will rise to them. Treat every man as a Soldier. He may surprise you and be one. Theseus p. 210"

"There is something I must tell you. When Leonidas selected you for the Three Hundred, I went to him in private and argued strenuously against your inclusion. I thought you would not fight. [...] I was wrong. Polynikes p. 324"

"You have never tasted freedom friend, or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel. Dienekes p. 60"

"Both men were aware of the imperative held by all warrior races to serve honor before survival. Mother Bones (Narrator) p. 10"

"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. Richmond Chapman, p. 204"

"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. Polynikes p. 405"

"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. Alcibades, p. 245"

"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. Major Mike Mallory, p. 60"

"To yield to Resistance deforms our spirit. It stunts us and makes us less than we are and were born to be. p. 13"

"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. Leonides p. 427"

"Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance. p. 13"

"You English are loath to embrace the virtues of the warrior. Such an act embarrasses you. You prefer to see yourselves as civilians summoned reluctantly to arms, as-what is the word?-'amatuers.' But you are warriors, you English. You are, Chapman. Trust me, who has faced you in the field. Oberleutnant Ehrlich, wounded German POW, p. 237"

"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. Father p. 87"

"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? Damon p. 221"

"I love a guy who knows how to bitch. Any moron can gripe about chow or rotations, but someone who can get exercised over architecture is my kind of dude. Gent, p. 202"

"I had become someone they could look to for leadership and direction, who would shield from meddling from above, and would ask no act of them that he wasn't prepared to perform himself. I provided for my men a framework within which they were freed to use their own qualities of courage, resourcefulness and tenacity. Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the second criteria for an able commander"

"The Mammoth we attacked was not Rommel's after all. [...] Rommel himself, we'll learn later, was not in that camp and never had been. At the time of our raid, he was with the 15th Panzer Division, somewhere west of Kidney Ridge, in the thick of the fighting at El Alamein. Richmond Chapman, p. 177"

"If you think this is funny, wait 'till you get into combat. You'll think that's hysterical! Polynikes p. 80"

"Do you love your country? [...] This man, with his life, has preserved it. Bear him with honor. Orontes (Handing over Xeones' corpse to Athenian civilians) p. 430"

"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. Polemides, p. 162"

"Humankind is commanded to ascend from savagery. This is God's mandate, which cries out from the epicenter of our being: the imperative to mount from the base to the noble, from the savage to the civil, from beast to human. Theseus p. 119"