Carlos Castaneda Quotes

89 Sourced Quotes

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.

Carlos Castaneda
To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that.

Carlos Castaneda
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting... Thus a man of knowledge sweats and puffs and if one looks at him he is just like an ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under his control.

Carlos Castaneda
The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.

Carlos Castaneda
Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.

Carlos Castaneda
To tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control

Carlos Castaneda
To die with elation is a crappy way of dying... A warrior dies the hard way. His death must struggle to take him. A warrior does not give himself to it.

Carlos Castaneda
My benefactor used to say the seeds are the 'sober head' -- the only part that could fortify the heart of man.

Carlos Castaneda
That's your doing. Now in order to affect that doing I am going to recommend that you learn another doing... It may hook you to another doing and then you may realize that both doings are lies, unreal, and that to hinge yourself to either one is a waste of time, because the only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the note-doing of the self

Carlos Castaneda
You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.

Carlos Castaneda
Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.

Carlos Castaneda
Knowledge for a warrior is something that comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on

Carlos Castaneda
The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune!

Carlos Castaneda
The fact of the matter is that many children see.... Most of those who see are considered to be oddballs and every effort is made to correct them.

Carlos Castaneda
A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the hunting routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable

Carlos Castaneda
This very rock where we're sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give out attention to it

Carlos Castaneda
As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in the world he cannot really appreciate the world around him.

Carlos Castaneda
A warrior could not avoid pain and grief but only the indulging in them

Carlos Castaneda
Sorcerers are convinced that all of us are a bunch of nincompoops. We can never relinquish our crummy control voluntarily, thus we have to be tricked

Carlos Castaneda
My benefactor said that when a man embarks on the paths of sorcery he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life has been forever left behind; that knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive. The first thing he ought to do, at that point, is to want to become a warrior...

Carlos Castaneda
A warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try to change, even though he knows that he won't be able to. That's the only advantage a warrior has over the average man. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to change.

Carlos Castaneda
Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing me.

Carlos Castaneda
My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying, It has happened to me a number of times after that first time.

Carlos Castaneda
One should never turn to one's left when facing the nagual.

Carlos Castaneda
The secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don't do.

Carlos Castaneda
For a human being, sadness is as powerful as terror. Sadness makes a warrior shed tears of blood.

Carlos Castaneda
Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

Carlos Castaneda
Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.

Carlos Castaneda
It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us

Carlos Castaneda
The world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect.

Carlos Castaneda