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• Classical Wisdom
• Heritage of Faith
• American Revolution
• Enduring Americans
• International Philosophy

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Mental warfare forged in conversation, from those who train the mind like a muscle.

• Be Yourself - Zak Ruppert
• I would want to tell her, my daughter, to not fall into the trap of feeling you have to conform to what society wants you to be. That peer pressure is going to lead to always chasing the same thing, which is ever changing. Chasing that level of acceptance can be detrimental,  because you are going to have to change your personality every time. Be yourself and be happy with yourself.
• Disciplined Results - Rasmus Elnæs
• Discipline is the art of just doing it. It is an action. It is not about how you feel, what you are going to do, or what you have done. It is sticking to your plan and trusting it because you know you will get the results. It is just a matter of time. 
• Enjoyable Journeys - Stephen Marlo
• There is something to be said about how painful it is along the way. It is cliche to say it is about the journey, not about the end result, but it is true. If you can not find a way to enjoy the ride, you are going to get to the top of the mountain and just be like: damn, what a waste of time. The more painful it is, the more enjoyable it becomes. 
• Eternal Joy - Mark Ferguson
• Joy is eternal. When I am around my grandchildren, that is joy. Happiness is a temporary and brief feeling. Joy is spiritual. Joy is a connection and a level beyond happiness that will last a lifetime.
• Human Wins - Emily LaFave
• You have to lose. You have to fail. If you do not fail, then you cannot win. If you do not even try, you are not going to win. Will you fail again? Probably. Not every mistake that you make is exactly the same. You are a human being. Life would be really boring if you were not.
• Proud Setbacks - David Porter
• “Be proud of yourself despite your setbacks. Be proud of yourself especially when you lose. Having that ability to say to yourself, “You are good enough, you did well enough,” and having that acceptance will lead you to making better choices later, which leads to better character development. Fail, fail again, fail better.”
• Respect Yourself - Roderick Harris
• “From day one, I instilled in them: respect yourself. Some things you will not do if you respect yourself, because you have a higher standard. The higher the standard you hold for yourself, the less you will lower your standards for others.”

Classical Wisdom

Ancient discipline for modern excellence, principles that outlasted empires.

• Craving More - Lucius Annaeus Seneca
• "It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor. What does it matter how much a man has laid up in his safe, or in his warehouse, how large are his flocks and how fat his dividends, if he covets his neighbour's property, and reckons, not his past gains, but his hopes of gains to come? Do you ask what is the proper limit to wealth? It is, first, to have what is necessary, and, second, to have what is enough.”
• Morior Invictus - Death Before Defeat
• Perceived Understanding - Epictetus
• “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows. As to things then which ought to be done and ought not to be done, and good and bad, and beautiful and ugly. On these matters we praise, we censure, we accuse, we blame, we judge and determine about principles honourable and dishonourable.”

Heritage of Faith

Sacred strength and eternal foundation, for those who build on something bigger than themselves.

• Patient Love - 1 Corinthians 13, English Standard Version
• “Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
• - Romans 12
• Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

American Revolution

Revolutionary wisdom that built a nation.

• Complacent Suffering - Declaration of Independence
• “Accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
• Curb Temper - Abigail Adams (19 January 1780)
• “You must do it for yourself. You must curb that impetuosity of temper, but which properly directed may be productive of great good. I know you capable of these exertions. If you indulge yourself in the practise of any foible or vice in youth, it will gain strength with your years and become your conquerer.”
• Dessolated Lover - John Adams (6 May 1816)
• “The dessolated Lover and disappointed Connections, are compelled by their Grief to reflect on the vanity of human Wishes and Expectations; to learn the essential Lesson of Resignation; to review their own Conduct towards the deceased; to correct any Errors or faults in their future conduct towards their remaining friends and towards all Men; to recollect the Virtues of the lost Friend and resolve to imitate them; his Follies and Vices if he had and resolve to avoid them.”
• Great Distance - Abigail Adams
• “I am anxious to hear how you do. The great distance between us makes me anxious. A thousand fears crowd upon my mind. I cannot help being apprehensive that your health will be injured by so much application to business and so little relaxation. I fear you will have too much upon your hands. The multiplicity of cares which surround you fill me with concern.”
• Naturally Proud - Benjamin Franklin
• “In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself; you will see it, perhaps, often in this history; for, even if I could conceive that I had compleatly overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility.”
• Precious Value - Thomas Paine (The American Crisis, 1776)
• “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”
• Stubborn Facts - John Adams (Counsel for the Defense, Boston Massacre Trials)
• “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
• True Friendship - George Washington
• "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence—true friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo & withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.“

Enduring Americans

Proof that excellence needs no permission.

• Future Evaluation - Nikola Tesla
• "I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything. Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs. The future, for which I have really worked, is mine."
• Glorious Triumphs - Theodore Roosevelt (10 April 1899)
• “Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
• Habitual Excellence - Will Durant
• Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly.  We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
• Infinite Wonders - Helen Keller
• “The infinite wonders of the universe are revealed to us in exact measure as we are capable of receiving them. The keenness of our vision depends not on how much we can see, but on how much we feel. Nor yet does mere knowledge create beauty. Nature sings her most exquisite songs to those who love her.”
• Inner Battles - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
• "Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad." - Henry Longfellow May you triumph over the hardships you tell no one about.
• Strenuous Life - Theodore Roosevelt
• I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
• Superstitious Truth - Frederick Douglass
• “I may be deemed superstitious, and even egotistical, in regarding this event as a special interposition of divine Providence in my favor. But I should be false to the earliest sentiments of my soul, if I suppressed the opinion. I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.”
• Two Successes - Theodore Roosevelt
• “There is, first, the success either in big things or small things which comes to the man who has in him the natural power to do what no one else can do. This is the most striking kind of success. But much the commoner type of success in every walk of life and in every species of effort is that which comes to the man who differs from his fellows not by the kind of quality which he possesses but by the degree of development which he has given that quality.”
• Victorious Effort - Theodore Roosevelt
• “We do not admire the man of timid peace. We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.”

International Philosophy

World wisdom without borders, that strength speaks every language.

• Careful Love - Charles Dickens
• “It's your object to take care of number one, meaning yourself. You can't take care of yourself, number one, without taking care of me, number one. I'm of the same importance to you, as you are to yourself. The more you value your number one, the more careful you must be of mine; so we come at last to what I told you at first, that a regard for number one holds us all together, and must do so, unless we would all go to pieces in company.”
• Certain Victory - Sun Tzu
• Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated. Hence the skillful fighter puts himself into a position which makes defeat impossible, and does not miss the moment for defeating the enemy.
• Endowed Intelligence - Leonardo DaVinci
• I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
• Human Existence - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• “For the secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.”
• Interpretations - Friedrich Nietzsche
• “In opposition to Positivism, which halts at phenomena and says, "These are only facts and nothing more," I would say: No, facts are precisely what is lacking, all that exists consists of interpretations. We cannot establish any fact "in itself": it may even be nonsense to desire to do such a thing. "Everything is subjective," you say: but that in itself is interpretation.”
• Love Everything - Leo Tolsley
• What is love? Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.
• Magic Memories - Georges Duhamel
• “We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that transfiguration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.”
• Observing Struggle - Blaise Pascal
• The struggle alone pleases us, not the victory. It is the same in play, and the same in the search for truth. In disputes we like to see the clash of opinions, but not at all to contemplate truth when found. In the passions, there is pleasure in seeing the collision of two contraries; but when one acquires the mastery, it becomes only brutality. 
• Respectful Truth - Fyodor Dostoevsky
• “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”
• Shared Sorrow - Oscar Wilde
• “If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. But if after I am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. He who can look at the loveliness of the world and share its sorrow, and realize something of the wonder of both, is in immediate contact with divine things, and has got as near to God’s secret as any one can get.”
• Thinking Fighter - William Francis Butler (1889)
• "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking by cowards.”
• Untaught Genius - Charles Dickens
• In a word, I was too cowardly to do what I knew to be right, as I had been too cowardly to avoid doing what I knew to be wrong. Quite an untaught genius, I made the discovery of the line of action for myself.