Quotes from James B. Stockdale

So what Epictetus was telling his students was that there can be no such thing as being the "victim" of another. You can only be a "victim" of yourself. It's all in how you discipline your mind. Who

George Bernard Shaw said that most people who fail complain that they are the victims of circumstances. Those who get on in this world, he said, are those who go out and look for the right circumstances. And if they can't find them they make their own.

Epictetus: "The judgment seat and a prison is each a place, the one high, the other low; but the attitude of your will can be kept the same, if you want to keep it the same, in either place.

Work with what you have control of and you'll have your hands full.

So make sure in your heart of hearts, in your inner self, that you treat your station in life with indifference, not with contempt, only with indifference.

Epictetus: "Look not for any greater harm than this: destroying the trustworthy, self-respecting well-behaved man within you.

What are the benefits of a Stoic life?" I would probably say, "It is an ancient and honorable package of advice on how to stay out of the clutches of those who are trying to get you on the hook, trying to give you a feeling of obligation, trying to get moral leverage on you, to force you to bend to their will.

THOSE WHO STUDY the rise and fall of civilizations learn that no shortcoming has been as surely fatal to republics as a dearth of public virtue, the unwillingness of those who govern to place the value of their society above personal interest.

It is the future that we are more likely to think of immediately when the idea of progress is brought up," says Robert Nisbet, "but it was only when men became conscious of a long past . . . that a consciousness of progressive movement from past to present became possible" (History of the Idea of Progress, New York, 1980, p. 323).

Rewards and penalties are totally random; knaves thrive and saints go hungry.

Aristotle: "Education is an ornament in prosperity and a refuge in adversity." I had lived in the truth of that for all those years.

It is my purpose, as one who lived and acted in these days . . . to show how the malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous, how the councils of prudence and restraint may become the prime agents of mortal danger ... and how the middle course, adopted from desires for safety and a quiet life may he found to lead direct to the bull's-eye of disaster.

After ejection I had about thirty seconds to make my last statement in freedom before I landed in the main street of a little village right ahead. And so help me, I whispered to myself: "Five years down there, at least. I'm leaving the world of technology and entering the world of Epictetus.

the sine qua non of a leader has lain not in his chesslike grasp of issues and the options they portend, not in his style of management, not in his skill at processing information, but in his having the character, the heart, to deal spontaneously, honorably, and candidly with people, perplexities, and principles.

Do what you will, reputation is at least as fickle as your station in life. Others decide what your reputation is.

don't let "reputation" get mixed up with your moral purpose or your will power; they are important. Make sure "reputation" is in that box in the bottom drawer marked "matters of indifference

If you want to protect yourself from "fear and guilt," and those are the crucial pincers, the real long-term destroyers of will, you have to get rid of all your instincts to compromise, to meet people halfway. You have to learn to stand aloof, never give openings for deals, never level with your adversaries. You have to become what Ivan Denisovich called a "slow movin' cagey prisoner.