The amateur plays for fun. The professional plays for keeps. To the amateur, the game is his avocation. To the pro it’s his vocation.
We know what the clan is; we know how to fit into the band and the tribe. What we don’t know is how to be alone. We don’t know how to be free individuals. The.
Maybe it’s less threatening to believe that our beloved spouse is worthy to live out his or her unlived life, while we are not.
The role of the officer, in my experience, is nothing grander than to stand sentinel over himself and his men, towards the end of keeping them from forgetting who they are and what their objective is, how to get there, and what equipment they’re supposed to have when they arrive.
Ignorance and arrogance are the artist and entrepreneur’s indispensable allies. She must be clueless enough to have no idea how difficult her enterprise is going to be – and cocky enough to believe she can pull it off anyway.
When we truly understand that the tribe doesn’t give a damn, we’re free. There is no tribe, and there never was. Our lives are entirely up to us.
The danger is greatest when the finish line is in sight. At this point, Resistance knows we’re about to beat it. It hits the panic button. It marshals one last assault and slams us with everything it’s got.
What better way of avoiding work than going to a workshop?
The years have taught me one skill: how to be miserable. I know how to shut up and keep humping. This is a great asset because it’s human, the proper role for a mortal.
I hold Olympic records for procrastination. I can procrastinate thinking about my procrastination problem.
My role-options in life and career, I realized, were not limited to Businessman, Athlete, and Boneheaded Patriot.
All of a sudden I understood why I was so moody, neurotic, simultaneously paranoid and megalomaniac, mistrustful, uneasy, driven by ambition but paralyzed by guilt about my ambition, horny, obsessive, compulsive, obsessive-compulsive, not to mention shy, withdrawn, and dandruff-ridden. I was creative. All creative people were like that!
Sharon was a realist. He recognized, as did Ben-Gurion and Dayan, that the Arabs had as legitimate a claim to this land as we did, and that they possessed pride and courage and anger, against which no rejoinder existed except the sword.
A nation is born in blood and purchases with blood its right to stand in the ranks with other nations.
The enemy is in you, but it is not you.
He looks upon sky and steppe and sees that which God has created. I look and see God Himself.
It’s okay to be an introvert, to seek out the quiet corners at a cocktail party, to care about quality, to have your mood be affected by your surroundings.
The linebacker and the Army Ranger go into action as part of a team. But the artist and the entrepreneur enter combat alone. I take my hat off to every man or woman who does this.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come, From God who is our home.
Remember, the Muse favors working stiffs. She hates prima donnas. To the gods the supreme sin is not rape or murder, but pride. To think of yourself as a mercenary, a gun for hire, implants the proper humility. It purges pride and preciousness.