Cav > Cav's Quotes

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
― Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles

“If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever. Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. Free of pain, free of the obligations of life and death. But change is law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.”
― Socrates

“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
― Lao Tzu

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“The most important conversations you’ll ever have are the ones you’ll have with yourself.”
― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

“It's not always going to be 70 degrees and sunny”
― David Goggins

“Every big accomplishment is a series of little accomplishments.”
― David J. Schwartz, The Magic of Thinking Big

“Those who don't listen must feel.”
― Jamaican Proverb

“If you know your enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles...”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
― George Carlin

“To dare is to lose one's footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Decadence is a moral and spiritual disease, resulting from too long a period of wealth and power, producing cynicism, decline of religion, pessimism and frivolity. The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving.”
― John Bagot Glubb, The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”
― George Orwell

“Peace through superior firepower.”
― John Ringo, A Hymn Before Battle

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
― Reinhold Niebuhr

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

“If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”
― John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

“A student asked to his master: "You teach me fighting but you talk about peace. How do you reconcile the two?"

The master replied: " It's better to be warrior in garden than to be a gardener in war.”
― Zen Master

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

“The evidence, unfortunately, is that the West is not even remotely interested in mounting a defense of its values in the face of Muslim fanaticism. Worse, there are signs that the West is even prepared to sacrifice some of its core values in order to appease those who have always despised these values.”
― Lee Harris

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.”
― Mark Twain

“History is never tidy.”
― Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
― George Orwell

“In the military we always say we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training,”
― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

“If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.”
― Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead

“the hottest fire forges the strongest steel.”
― Daniel Humphreys, Night's Black Agents

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy.”
― Winston Churchill British Prime Minister

“E pur si muove."

(And yet it moves.)

(What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.)”
― Galileo Galilei