Builder Mode

"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

"You see persons and things not as they are but as you are."

"I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me."

"You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."

"If you're a decent leader, you don't dare lose it—for your own good. You've got to keep your unit up there doing its job. Combat is no place for martinets."

"There are no bad teams, only bad leaders."

"What makes a decision great is not that it has a great outcome. A great decision is the result of a good process, and that process must include an attempt to accurately represent our own state of knowledge."

"If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day."

"I don't know where we are going, but I know exactly how to get there."

"It is fitting, now, to speak of ambition. I was ambitious. I worked hard. I wanted to be the best poet... Now I think of the long-dead poets whose work I loved. I don't think about their rankings; I love to read them."

"The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream."

"To hunt means to have the land around you like clothing. To engage in a wordless dialogue with it, one so absorbing that you cease to talk with your human companions."

"In a fight with Comanches, dismounting on open ground was like signing your own death warrant."

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

"Sol Weintraub had come to a single, unshakable conclusion: any allegiance to a deity or concept or universal principle which put obedience above decent behavior toward an innocent human being was evil."

"Everybody is identical in their secret unspoken belief that way deep down they are different from everyone else."

"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen."

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

"If you dare nothing, then when the day is over, nothing is all you will have gained."

"A man can free his soul only by exhausting his body."

"It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting."

"You have power over your mind—not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength."

"The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome."

"For scientific leadership, give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems to be no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton."

"History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets."