55 Most Popular Carlos Castaneda Quotes

If you are also a fan of Carlos Castaneda and want to know more about him, these Carlos Castaneda quotes are for you.

Carlos Castaneda was a well-known American writer. Most people believe that Carlos Castaneda’s work was based on philosophies and practices. He worked on non-fiction things.

Carlos Castaneda’s work was famous worldwide and is also translated into seventeen different languages.

The favorite book of Carlos Castaneda sold more than 28 million copies in the world. He has done anthropology and gained fame due to his renowned writing.

His writings include Tales of Power, The Art of Dreaming, and The Fire From Within. With his work, thoughts, and sayings, he teaches others to follow their heart.

The core messages in Castaneda’s teachings is to listen to that voice within and follow your dreams. Here is a great collection of quotes from Carlos Castaneda to listen to help you follow that inner voice.

The Best Carlos Castaneda Quotes

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2. “We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” ― Carlos Castaneda
3. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” ― Carlos Castaneda
4. “A 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 . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask 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
5. “The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.” ― Carlos Castaneda
6. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
7. “In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.”― Carlos Castaneda
8. “We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”― Carlos Castaneda
9. “A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. ” ― Carlos Castaneda
10. “For me, there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length–and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.”― Carlos Castaneda
11. “To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.”― Carlos Castaneda
12. “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.
13. “Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I.”― Carlos Castaneda
14. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
15. “You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall and feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”― Carlos Castaneda
16. “Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, then it is of no use to us.”― Carlos Castaneda
17. “For me, the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, and 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. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.” ― Carlos Castaneda

18. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda

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20. “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, you must not stay with it under any circumstances.”― Carlos Castaneda
21. “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. Your death will tell you that you’re wrong and that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.”― Carlos Castaneda
22. “Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”― Carlos Castaneda
23. “We are men, and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.”― Carlos Castaneda
24. “All paths are the same: they lead nowhere.. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere, but one has a heart, the other doesn’t. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.” ― Carlos Castaneda
25. “Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.”― Carlos Castaneda
26. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
27. “Forget the self, and you will fear nothing, at whatever level of awareness you find yourself to be.”― Carlos Castaneda
28. “The average man is hooked to his fellow-men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.” ― Carlos Castaneda
29. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
30. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
31. “Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.”― Carlos Castaneda
32. “Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it, it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.”― Carlos Castaneda

33. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda

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35. “A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.”― Carlos Castaneda
36. “I had been experiencing brief flashes of disassociation or shallow states of non-ordinary reality.”― Carlos Castaneda
37. “The art of being a warrior is to balance the wonder and the terror of being alive.”― Carlos Castaneda
38. “Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. Don Juan”― Carlos Castaneda
39. “My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me, and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general or for being alive in particular.”― Carlos Castaneda
40. “and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.” ― Carlos Castaneda
41. “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.” ― Carlos Castaneda
42. “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.”― Carlos Castaneda
43. “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.

44. “…that was the way human beings are; they love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.” ― Carlos Castaneda

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46. “The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. 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 humility. The average man is hooked to his fellow-men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.” ― Carlos Castaneda
47. “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” ― Carlos Castaneda
48. “Self-importance requires spending most of one’s life offended by something or someone.”― Carlos Castaneda
49. “Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve one’s sadness,” don Juan said. “Warriors are always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings.” Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. “This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally, when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom.”― Carlos Castaneda
50. “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.”-Carlos Castaneda
51. “In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, “Most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. If we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur, and two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to … catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe.” ― Carlos Castaneda
52. “The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn’t deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments; we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy.”― Carlos Castaneda
53. “We don’t need more to be thankful for; we just need to be more thankful.”― Carlos Castaneda
54. “One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it… Little by little, you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure or real. Your problem now is that you’re too real. Your endeavors are too real, and your moods are too real. Don’t take things for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.”Carlos Castaneda
55. “To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.”― Carlos Castaneda

Final thoughts on Carlos Castaneda quotes

As you can see from the above words of wisdom, Carlos Castaneda quotes are indeed a worthy addition on this site. With a strong focus on inner strength, we are reminded that our power comes from within. We are reminded that, through own thinking, we can indeed choose happiness or unhappiness.

Quote number 20 is one of my favourites. Castaneda says,

“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, you must not stay with it under any circumstances.”― Carlos Castaneda

Is it now wonderful to awaken to the knowledge that, in any given circumstances, there is several possibilities we can pursue?  When you do not get that job you were so fixated upon, as hard as it may be to accept, remind yourself that there are several other possibilities that are just as pleasing if you are open to them.

There are plenty of words of wisdom in Carlos Castaneda quotes and I hope they have resonated with you somewhat. You may also be interested in Michael Beckwith quotes, Prentice Mulford quotes or Joseph Murphy quotes.