«‹How long will it take me to master aikido?› a prospective student asks. ‹How long do you expect to live?› is the only respectable response. Ultimately, practice is the path of mastery. If you stay on it long enough, you’ll find it to be a vivid place, with its ups and downs, its challenges and comforts, its surprises, disappointments, and unconditional joys. You’ll take your share of bumps and bruises while traveling—bruises of the ego as well of the body, mind, and spirit—but it might well turn out to be the most liable thing in your life. Then, too, it might eventually make a winner in your chosen field, if that’s what you’re looking for, and then people will refer to you as a master. But that’s not really the point. What is mastery? At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path.»George Leonard (1992). Mastery. New York: Plume, S. 79f.