The Warrior Ethos by Steven Pressfield

I. Brief Summary

A short and investigate read on warrior mindset. It's a classic Pressfield book. He provides numerous examples from the lives and journeys of Alexander the Great to King Leonidas of Sparta to Arjuna from Bhagavad-Gita that leave you feeling inspired and emboldened to live by such ethos.

II. Big Ideas

• There are two types of salary, but psychological salary is the important one.
• Opposite of fear is love.
• The warrior's primary enemy is not an external force, but the fear and resistance within oneself.
• True courage is not the absence of fear, but acting in spite of it.
• Warrior ethos is eagerness to embrace adversity, a will to fight, a passion to be great.
• Easier to be soldier than civilian because you fight for others.
• Shared sacrifice is opportunity for honor or virtue.
• Self-sacrifice is not about giving up everything, but about putting something greater than oneself at stake.
• Honor is not about outward appearances, but about living with integrity.
• Warrior archetype is foundation for other archetypes and most powerful and impactful of all.
• Why do young men and women in a free society enlist in the military? One answer may be that the young man or woman is seeking a rite of passage. We want action. We seek to test ourselves. We want friends—real friends, who will put themselves on the line for us—and we want to do the same for them. We want to be part of something greater than ourselves, something we can be proud of.

III. Quotes

• Wars change, but warriors don’t. They live by ethos or virtues.
• A Spartan mother handed her son his shield as he prepared to march off to battle. She said, “Come back with this or on it.”
• The Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.
• Does a fighting man require a flag or a cause to claim a code of honor?
• Is honor coded into our genes? What does honor consist of—in an age when the concept seems almost abandoned by society at large, at least in the West?
• We all fight wars—in our work, within our families and abroad in the wider world.
• The king didn’t pick his 300 champions for that quality. He picked them instead, he says, for the courage of their women. He chose these specific warriors for the strength of their wives and mothers to bear up under their loss.
• The lioness hunts. The alpha female defends the wolf pack. The Warrior Ethos is not, at bottom, a manifestation only of male aggression or of the masculine will to dominance. Its foundation is society-wide. It rests on the will and resolve of mothers and wives and daughters—and, in no few instances, of female warriors as well—to defend their children, their home soil and the values of their culture.
• Every warrior virtue proceeds from this—courage, selflessness, love of and loyalty to one’s comrades, patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity. It all comes from the hunting band’s need to survive.
• Tribes practice the primacy of honor. Tribes are governed not by the rule of law but by a code of honor.
• Tribes prize loyalty and cohesion. Tribes revere elders and the gods. Tribes resist change. Tribes suppress women. Tribes value the capacity to endure hardship.
• Sociologists tell us that there are two types of cultures: guilt-based and shame-based.
• If shame is the negative, honor is the positive.
• As soldiers, we have been taught discipline. Now we teach ourselves self-discipline. As fighting men and women, we have been motivated, commanded and validated by others. Now we school ourselves in self-motivation, self-command, self-validation.
• The yogi was a warrior too. An inner warrior.
• We want to be part of something greater than ourselves, something we can be proud of. And we want to come out of the process as different (and better) people than we were when we went in. We want to be men, not boys. We want to be women, not girls. We want a rite of passage. We want to grow up.
• We want action. We seek to test ourselves. We want friends—real friends, who will put themselves on the line for us—and we want to do the same for them.
• The capacity for empathy and self-restraint will serve us powerfully, not only in our external wars but in the conflicts within our own hearts.
• The hardest thing in the world is to be ourselves. Who are we? Our family tells us, society tells us, laws and customs tell us. But what do we say? How do we get to that place of self-knowledge and conviction where we are able to state without doubt, fear or anger, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, this is how I intend to live my life?”
• Let us be, then, warriors of the heart, and enlist in our inner cause the virtues we have acquired through blood and sweat in the sphere of conflict—courage, patience, selflessness, loyalty, fidelity, self-command, respect for elders, love of our comrades (and of the enemy), perseverance, cheerfulness in adversity and a sense of humor, however terse or dark.
• The names of these enemy warriors, in Sanskrit, can be read two ways. They can be simply names. Or they can represent inner crimes or personal vices, such as greed, jealousy, selfishness, the capacity to play our friends false or to act without compassion toward those who love us.
• A warrior culture trains for adversity. Luxury and ease are the goals advertised to the civilian world.
• The will to victory may be demonstrated in places other than actual battle.
• Alexander operated by the same principle. Let us conduct ourselves so that all men wish to be our friends and all fear to be our enemies.
• Warrior cultures (and warrior leaders) enlist shame, not only as a counter to fear but as a goad to honor. The warrior advancing into battle (or simply resolving to keep up the fight) is more afraid of disgrace in the eyes of his brothers than he is of the spears and lances of the enemy.
• The payoff for a life of adversity is freedom.
• The warrior culture, on the other hand, values cohesion and obedience. The soldier or sailor is not free to do whatever he wants. He serves; he is bound to perform his duty.