What we get when we turn pro is, we find our power. We find our will and our voice and we find our self-respect. We become who we always were but had… - Steven Pressfield

The foe fell back. Our companies pushed through. For the time it takes to count to five hundred, I thought we might even conquer. For now the mulishness of the Athenian Soldier-farmer, the pigheaded refusal to yield which had at first been scorned by his betters-now this shone to the fore. By the gods, these clodkickers had learned how to fight! [...] They no longer fell apart at the apparition of cowardice among their comrades or themselves, but had come to understand that the same man may play the craven in the morning and the hero in the afternoon. Give them this: they were tough. Tougher than the Scyths and Getai, for all their savage valor, and tougher than the Amazons, despite their dash and dazzle.

A king does not abide within his tent while his men bleed and die upon the field. A king does not dine while his men go hungry, nor sleep when they stand at watch upon the wall. A king does not command his men's loyalty through fear nor purchase it with gold; he earns their love by the sweat of his own back and the pains he endures for their sake. That which comprises the harshest burden, a king lifts first and sets down last. A king does not require service of those he leads but provides it to them...A king does not expend his substance to enslave men, but by his conduct and example makes them free.

As artists and professionals it is our obligation to enact our own internal revolution, a private insurrection inside our own skulls. In this uprising we free ourselves from the tyranny of consumer culture.