Success Quote by Alan Cohen

The line flatters you into rebellion. Alan Cohen borrows the language of religion - “masters,” “worship,” “divinity” - only to strip it of its usual hierarchy. The rhetorical trick is a bait-and-switch: you arrive expecting a sermon about humility before greatness, and you leave with permission to stop kneeling. It’s motivational, yes, but it’s also a critique of the fan economy that turns talent into an altar and audiences into permanent minors.

Cohen’s intent is to reframe admiration as a productive force rather than a submissive one. “Great masters neither want nor need your worship” isn’t really about the masters; it’s about the psychological comfort worship provides. Worship lets you outsource your own possibility. If the master is godlike, your distance from them feels natural, even moral. Emulation threatens that arrangement because it implies you’re accountable for your own creative and ethical ambition.

The subtext is quietly anti-guru, especially coming from a businessman operating in self-help-adjacent territory where charismatic authority is a business model. By insisting the “greatest gift” is to “claim” divinity as your own, he markets a democratized sacredness: the student as sovereign, the consumer as creator. That’s empowering, but it’s also savvy. It relocates the source of value from the idol to the individual - a move that resonates in a culture exhausted by celebrity worship and algorithmic stanhood, yet still hungry for transcendence.

What makes the quote work is its double-bind: it honors greatness while denying it the right to dominate you. Admire, then move.