Jeff Cooper Quotes

It's all to do with the training: you can do a lot if you're properly trained.

If I had more skill in what I'm attempting, I wouldn't need so much courage

Over time I learned that there are two very different satisfactions that you can have in your life. One is the satisfaction of becoming skilled at something. It almost doesn't matter what the terrain is. There is a deep, soul-feeding resonance in mastery itself, whether in teaching, writing a complicated software program, coaching a baseball team, or marshalling a group of people to start a new business.

Creativity is not a substitute for competence.

To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.

You have to know your craft. I find that most people who are very, very successful know their craft and have done the research.

Knowledge must become capability.

The truth is that any good modern rifle is good enough. The determining factor is the man behind the gun.

You have to get comfortable [with your work], you really have to know what you're doing, and it has to be almost boring to you to be able to do it well.

It is long been a principal of ours that one is no more armed because he has possession of a firearm than he is a musician because he owns a piano. There is no point in having a gun if you are not capable of using it skillfully.

Practice makes the master.

To become proficient in any field you must practise. There is simply no achievement without practice and the more practice, provided it is done intelligently, the greater will the proficiency be and the sooner will it be attained.

A badge is a symbol that girls have done the thing it stands for often enough, thoroughly enough, and well enough to be prepared to give service in it.

Nothing is fun until you're good at it.

You have to be a master to teach.

The sum of all technical knowledge cannot make a master contract player.

I wouldn’t like to meet you when you’ve got a revolver,” said Margarita with a coquettish look at Azazello. She had a passion for people who did things well.

If I had ever learnt, I should have been a great proficient.

To do easily what is difficult for others is the mark of talent.

When a workman knows the use of his tools, he can make a door as well as a window.

The older I get the more I admire and crave competence, just simple competence, in any field from adultery to zoology.

Skill to do comes of doing.

All things require skill but an appetite.

There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.