100 Carlos Castaneda Quotes About The Warrior’s Way

Carlos Castaneda quotes:

Introduction

Carlos Castaneda was a figure of mystery and profound influence in the realms of anthropology and spirituality.

Born on December 25, 1925, in Cajamarca, Peru, he moved to the United States in the early 1950s.

His first book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” published in 1968, marked the beginning of a series of works known as “The Teachings of Don Juan.”

In these books, Castaneda chronicled his apprenticeship with a Yaqui Indian, Don Juan Matus.

Carlos Castaneda first encountered Don Juan Matus during a field trip to Arizona in 1960.

This meeting marked the beginning of a 13-year apprenticeship under the tutelage of Don Juan, who introduced Castaneda to the ancient spiritual practices of the Yaqui people.

Don Juan’s teachings, as conveyed by Castaneda, encourage the exploration of a different reality – one that exists beyond the limits of our ordinary perception.

100 Carlos Castaneda Quotes About The Warrior’s Way:

#1 “Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge.”

#2 “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.”

#3 “Nobody is born a warrior in exactly the same way that no one is born an average man.”

#4 “We know that nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable.”

#5 “To meet an ally, a man must be a spotless warrior or the ally may turn against him and destroy him.”

#6 “An average man doesn’t do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age, he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion, he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!”

#7 “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.”

#8 “I’m never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don’t feel that way any longer.”

#9 “The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.”

#10 “Man has a dark side, yes, and it is called stupidity.”

#11 “I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I have no thoughts, so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.”

#12 “Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces.”

#13 “Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.”

#14 “The ego is like a tired old dog. We can never kill it, so put it out on the back porch, let it rest there, and step around it.”

#15 “For a human being, sadness is as powerful as terror. Sadness makes a warrior shed tears of blood.”

#16 “It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us.”

#17 “Forget the self, and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

#18 “Things don’t change, only the way you look at them.”

#19 “We don’t need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful.”

#20 “Men have to be hooked. Women don’t need that. Women go freely into anything. That’s their power and, at the same time, their drawback. Men have to be led, and women have to be contained.”

#21 “Discipline, as understood by a warrior, is creative, open, and produces freedom. It is the ability to face the unknown, transforming the feeling of knowing into reverent astonishment; of considering things that exceed the scope of our habits, and daring to face the only war that is worthwhile: The battle for awareness.”

#22 “’Dreaming requires every bit of our available energy,’ he replied. ‘If there is a deep preoccupation in our life, there is no possibility of dreaming.’”

#23 “Our way of perceiving is a predator’s way. There is another mode, the one I am familiarizing you with: the act of perceiving the essence of everything, energy itself, directly.”

#24 “Our entrapment in processing our perception to fit a social mold loses its power when we realize we have accepted this mold, as an inheritance from our ancestors, without bothering to examine it.”

#25 “Everything is energy. The whole universe is energy. The social base of our perception should be the physical certainty that energy is all there is. A mighty effort should be made to guide us to perceive energy as energy.”

#26 “In the view of sorcerers, the universe is constructed in layers, which the energy body can cross.”

#27 “Until the energy body is complete and mature, it is self-absorbed. It can’t get free from the compulsion to be absorbed by everything.”

#28 “Each man is different. Each man must follow his own path. Each man is the same.”

#29 “Don Juan said that the sorcerers of antiquity, the inventors of the recapitulation, viewed breathing as a magical, life-giving act and used it, accordingly, as a magical vehicle; the exhalation, to eject the foreign energy left in them during the interaction being recapitulated and the inhalation to pull back the energy that they themselves left behind during the interaction.”

#30 “Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

#31 “In every explanation, there is a hidden apology.”

#32 “If we choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the integrity of reality.”

#33 “The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.”

#34 “When nothing is for sure, we remain alert, perennially on our toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.”

#35 “When man fell to his knees, he became the asshole he is today.”

#36 “But we must know first that our acts are useless, and yet we must proceed as if we didn’t know it. That’s a sorcerer’s controlled folly.”

#37 “You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too much. That’s the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue.”

#38 “There is no beginning, the beginning is only in your thought.”

#39 “I know now that human beings are creatures of awareness, involved in an evolutionary journey of awareness, beings indeed unknown to themselves, filled to the brim with incredible resources that are never used.”

#40 “When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.”

#41 “What channels the energy of our total being to produce anything that might be within the boundaries of possibility is known as will.”

#42 “What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we’d get would be a true gift.”

#43 “Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless.”

#44 “The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.”

#45 “Every warrior on the path of knowledge thinks, at one time or another, that he’s learning sorcery, but all he’s doing is allowing himself to be convinced of the power hidden in his being, and that he can reach it.”

#46 “The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.”

#47 “A hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn’t worry. To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry, you cling to anything out of desperation, and once you cling, you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”

#48 “Your problem is that you think you have time.”

#49 “Discipline makes the glowing coat of awareness unpalatable to the predator.”

#50 “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.”

#51 “Nothing is pending in the world…nothing is finished, yet nothing is unresolved…Everything is filled to the brim.”

#52 “In the universe, there is an un-measurable, indescribable force which sorcerers call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.”

#53 “The average man is either victorious or defeated, and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not see. Seeing dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering.”

#54 “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.”

#55 “Don Juan had always said to me that our great enemy is the fact that we never believe what is happening to us.”

#56 “Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?”

#57 “We don’t need anyone to teach us sorcery because there is really nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox!”

#58 “A warrior, or any man for that matter, cannot possibly wish he were somewhere else; a warrior because he lives by challenge, an ordinary man because he doesn’t know where his death is going to find him.”

#59 “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.”

#60 “The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.”

#61 “Man lives only to learn. And if he learns, it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.”

#62 “To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, our manhood.”

#63 “A warrior must focus his attention on the link between himself and his death . . .. He must let each of his acts be his last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will his acts have their rightful power.”

#64 “Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That’s the warrior’s way.”

#65 “Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to withstand the pressure of the unknowable.”

#66 “A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as a grounds for regret but as a living challenge.”

#67 “To be a warrior, a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death. But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self, and that would be debilitating. So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment. The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference. Now you must detach yourself; detach yourself from everything.”

#68 “Death is everywhere. It may be the headlights of a car on a hilltop in the distance behind. They may remain visible for a while, and disappear into the darkness as if they had been scooped away; only to appear on another hilltop, and then disappear again.”

#69 “If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.”

#70 “To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.”

#71 “I had been experiencing brief flashes of disassociation, or shallow states of non-ordinary reality.”

#72 “Malicious acts are performed by people for personal gain … Sorcerers, though, have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The fact that they enjoy their acts does not count as gain. Rather, it is a condition of their character. The average man acts only if there is a chance for profit. Warriors say they act not for profit but for the spirit.”

#73 “The art of being a warrior is to balance the wonder and the terror of being alive.”

#74 “Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it – what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

#75 “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.”

#76 “Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.”

#77 “The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done today. The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance, you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness.”

#78 “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.”

#79 “To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry, you cling to anything out of desperation, and once you cling, you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”

#80 “We are men, and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.”

#81 “I have no routines or personal history. One day, I found out that they were no longer necessary for me, and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them, and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little.”

#82 “For an instant, I think I saw. I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave which had been frozen in front of me, held back by the invisible wall of a metaphor.”

#83 “Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory, and complete.”

#84 “All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out, he has the necessary speed, the prowess, to pick it up.”

#85 “The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.”

#86 “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.”

#87 “Dissipating a mood through overanalyzing it wastes our power.”

#88 “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.”

#89 “Forget the self, and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.”

#90 “To seek freedom is the only driving force I know.”

#91 “Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you’re about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so.”

#92 “For me, the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time.”

#93 “We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”

#94 “Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity, you must lead a disciplined life.”

#95 “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.”

#96 “In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”

#97 “One shouldn’t worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.”

#98 “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.”

#99 “We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.”

#100 “You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.”

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