“Well, for starters, the obvious: we all seem to agree genius begins with feats of mental greatness. The thinking needs to be novel, so the results need to be beyond what most can envision. As it takes courage to push past the confines of culture, the thinking must also be brave. Because an athlete’s canvas is nothing more than his body moving through space and time, then an act of genius must also be defined as an act of redefinition–redefining what is possible for the human body.”
― The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
― The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
“It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off.”
― The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
― The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance
“Some thirty-six years after the death of Leonidas, King Agesilaus of Sparta, as Plutarch recounts, showed that the essential Spartan spirit, which distinguished her citizens from all others in Greece, still had not changed. At that time there was a war between a coalition led by Athens against Sparta and her allies. The latter had been complaining to Agesilaus that it was they who provided the bulk of the army. Agesilaus, accordingly, called a council meeting at which all the Spartan allies sat down on one side and the Spartans on the other. The king then told a herald to proclaim that all the potters among the allies and the Spartans should stand up. After this the herald called on the blacksmiths, the masons, and the carpenters to do likewise; and so he went on through all the crafts and trades. By the end of the herald’s recital almost every single man among the allies had risen to his feet. But not a Spartan had moved. The laws of Lycurgus still obtained. The king laughed and turned to his allies, remarking: ‘You see, my friends, how many more soldiers we send out than you do.’ The whole Spartan attitude is contained in those words.”
― Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
― Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
“A mind that dwells in the past builds a prison it cannot escape. Control your mind, or it will control you, and you will never break through the walls it builds.”
― The Atlantis Plague
― The Atlantis Plague
“The small Greek city-states could not understand what the organisation of a great empire and the movement of many thousands of men entailed: they themselves thought in terms of hundreds or at the most a few thousands. It would be well over a century until a Greece, unified under Alexander the Great, would have to tackle the problems of Empire.”
― Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
― Thermopylae: The Battle for the West
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