Hunting power is a very strange affair. There is no way to plan it ahead of time. That's what's exciting about it. A warrior proceeds as if he had a plan though, because he trusts his personal power. He knows for a fact that it will make him act in th emost appropriate fashion.

Don Juan assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself miserable I had to work in the most intense fashion, and that it was absurd. I had now realized I could work just the same in making myself complete and strong. "The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said. "We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

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.

Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.

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.

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.

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