George Leonard Quotes

#1. What we call "mastery" can be defined as that mysterious process through which what is at first difficult or even impossible becomes easy and pleasurable through diligent, patient, long-term practice.

George Leonard

#2. To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life.

George Leonard

#3. Our preoccupation with goals, results, and the quick fix has separated us from our own experiences.

George Leonard

#4. What a miracle it is, this gift of time! Little marks on paper, the children of consciousness, sent down to us through the years.

George Leonard

#5. Preventing the new generation from changing in any deep way is what most societies require of their educators.

George Leonard

#6. To learn is to change.

George Leonard

#7. The best way to describe your total creative capacity is to say that for all practical purposes it is infinite.

George Leonard

#8. The more you move in rhythm with someone, the closer you become with that person.

George Leonard

#9. To be a learner, you've got to be willing to be a fool.

George Leonard

#10. There is a human striving for self-transcendence. It's part of what makes us human. With all of our flaws we want to go a little bit further than we've gone before and maybe even further than anyone else has gone before.

George Leonard

#11. The essence of boredom is to be found in the obsessive search for novelty. Satisfaction lies in mindful repetition, the discovery of endless richness in subtle variations on familiar themes.

George Leonard

#12. For the master, surrender means there are no experts. There are only learners.

George Leonard

#13. How to begin the journey? You need only to take the first step. When? There is always now.

George Leonard

#14. It's easy to get on the path of mastery. The real challenge lies in staying on it.

George Leonard

#15. The subtle dance of the body joins us to the world.

George Leonard

#16. If you intend to take the journey of mastery, the best thing you can do is to arrange for first-rate instruction.

George Leonard

#17. Ultimately, human intentionality is the most powerful evolutionary force on this planet.

George Leonard

#18. Of what is the body made? It is made of emptiness and rhythm. At the ultimate heart of the body, at the heart of the world, there is no solidity. Once again, there is only the dance.

George Leonard

#19. How do you best move toward mastery? To put it simply, you practice diligently, but you practice primarily for the sake of the practice itself.

George Leonard

#20. Perhaps the safest prediction we can make about the future is that it will surprise us.

George Leonard

#21. Perhaps we'll never know how far the path can go, how much a human being can truly achieve, until we realize that the ultimate reward is not a gold medal but the path itself.

George Leonard

#22. At the heart of each of us, whatever our imperfections, there exists a silence pulse of perfect rhythm which is absolutely individual and unique, and yet which connects us to everything else.

George Leonard

#23. What if you're practicing wrong? Then you get very good at doing something wrong.

George Leonard

#24. The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.

George Leonard

#25. Education is ... doing anything that changes you.

George Leonard

#26. The real juice of life, whether it be sweet or bitter, is to be found not nearly so much in the products of our efforts as in the process of living itself, in how it feels to be alive.

George Leonard

#27. Mastery is the art of setting your foot on the path.

George Leonard

#28. Not to dream more boldly may turn out to be, in view of present realities, simply irresponsible.

George Leonard

#29. At the root of all power and motion, at the burning center of existence itself, there is music and rhythm.

George Leonard

#30. Practice is the path of mastery.

George Leonard

#31. Mastery is a journey, and that the master must have the courage to risk failure.

George Leonard

#32. Competition is the spice of sports; but if you make spice the whole meal you'll be sick.

George Leonard

#33. Keep practicing, even when you seem to be getting nowhere.

George Leonard

#34. Only the schools' inefficiency can account for creativity surviving after age 25.

George Leonard

#35. Intentionality fuels the master's journey. Every master is a master of vision.

George Leonard

#36. At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.

George Leonard

#37. At the heart of ech of us,whatever the imperfections..exists a silent pulse of perfect rhythm....which connect us to the universe.

George Leonard

#38. Everything was God, holy; as God is total, so the driftwood branch was holy. This must be the stuff religion is made of.

George Leonard