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“In fact no philosophical school is kindlier and gentler, nor more loving of humankind and more attentive to our common good to the degree that its very purpose is to be useful, bring assistance, and consider the interests not only of itself . . . but of all people.”
Don’t beat yourself up. Build yourself up. Make yourself better. That’s what friends do.
I would have taken the money. I would have seized the power. And perhaps they would have, too . . . if they were you.
What matters isn’t the title. It isn’t the power. It isn’t the wealth. It isn’t the control. That greatness isn’t what you have. It’s who you choose to become. Or who you choose to remain.
Responding, fighting back—this is expected. Rising above these understandable, even self-preserving instincts takes discipline. To be above it entirely is true self-mastery.
if we can do it, if we can keep showing up, keep giving, and keep striving to live up to those impossibly high standards? Well, according to Martin Luther King Jr., we reach the mountaintop. We touch something special, something higher, something holy.
It would be wonderful if no battles were ever lost by the good guys, if fearlessness or hard work were always enough, but this is not reality. Sometimes you have to live to fight another day. The question is not when you will have to do this, but how you will respond to it when that day comes.
Hope is important but it is not a strategy. Denial is not the same thing as determination. Delusion is destruction. Greed will get you in the end.
You must pay your debts, own your mistakes, communicate your intentions. You must have a plan for what you’re going to do after. Whether that’s a next project, a new chapter, another charge.
Paul Gallico, writing about his friend Lou Gehrig, tried to define the heroism of the man, and settled on “among other things, the capacity for quiet, uncomplaining suffering, the ability to take it and never to let on, never to let the world suspect you are taking it.”[*]
Don’t despair. Don’t give up. Keep the faith. Because one day, you will look back from the other side of this struggle . . . and be glad you did. All of us will.
Best is the person who adds shine to their accomplishments with their discipline, not the other way around.
This is what you find when you study the true masters of any profession. They don’t care much about winning, about money, about fame, about most of the things that have come their way as a result of their success. Their journey has always been toward something bigger. They aren’t running a race against the competition. They are in a battle with themselves.
Kobe strived every day not just to be the best, but to leave an impact on the game that has and will effect many generations of people not just basketball players
Who will you be? What race are you running? Who are you trying to beat? And is it for the best?
as the world changes and our position within it changes, adjusting, finding a way to be true to our principles that doesn’t condemn us to bitterness or needless failure or being on the outside of things.
Rigidity is fragility. Formlessness is unbreakable. We can choose one or the other.
You will concentrate your mind on what counts. You will not be inflated by the changes in your fortune. You will show that success has not changed you. Except that it has made you better.
Words don’t matter. Deeds do.
Nearly every single one of the American founders—from Washington to Franklin to Adams and Henry—made some version of the argument that their novel system of government was impossible without virtue in the people. Mainly they were talking about the virtue of temperance, the idea that freedom could not be sustained unless tempered by private restraint. Indeed, a people without self-control, Adams said, would break “the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
It wasn’t their words that mattered. It was what they did because of who they were.
When we read the commandments translated into English, they are rendered as just that, commandments. But Steinbeck thinks the Hebrew rendering is more accurate, not “Thou shalt” but “Thou mayest.” “Here is individual responsibility and the invention of conscience,” he reflected to his editor as he wrote those pages. “You can if you will but it is up to you. This little story turns out to be one of the most profound in the world. I always felt it was, but now I know it is.”
What will it be? Dependence or independence? Greatness or ruin? Discipline is destiny. It decides. Will you choose it?
