Study the Greats
**I study the greats.**
For if and when I find myself beaten down into the gutters of life - the vile, bile and the mundane - I shall draw strength from other great men - past, present and future - who, quite often, faced many more adversities and a lot more suffering, but chose to use them to their advantage, to overcome their dire circumstances and rise above the afflictions that life had bestowed upon them. It’s all been done before. It can be done again, better.
Learning from the past and from the present is very straightforward. Anyone can do that. But how does one learn from the future? It’s simple: you envision the best possible future for humanity, for generations to come, and for yourself. Then you figure out an approximate path on how to get there, and what kind of a man or a woman you must be to walk that path. The skills, the mindset, the qualities. And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, you find actionable measures, habits, convictions on how to become that person - and conversely, what are stopping you from becoming that person.
> “You must value learning above everything else.”
― Robert Greene
> “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'.”
― Viktor E. Frankl
> “You need to look at all events as having value. If you can do that, then you’re in a zone of tremendous opportunity.”
― Phil Stutz
> “I shall take the more pains to uncover the fountains of philosophy, from which all my eloquence has taken its rise.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
> “Error correction is the basis of all intelligence.”
― Jeff Booth
> “Yes, you’re likely to fail, that’s fine. Because the goal of playing is not to win, but to keep learning. And the day you stop learning is the day you stop living."
― Jesse Enkamp
> "A man is great not because he hasn't failed; a man is great because failure hasn't stopped him."
— Confucius
> “If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.”
― Michelangelo
> “First of all we have to decide what we are to do and what manner of men we wish to be - the most difficult problem in the world.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
> “You either bleed soul into your work, or let the work bleed out your soul.”
― Pran Yoganthan
> "The Stoic philosopher is the man who has liberated himself from fear. He’s not afraid of death, he’s not afraid of pain, he’s not afraid of other people’s dismissal as a fool. The only thing he cares about is that he should meet his moral obligations.”
― Michael Sugrue
> "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
― Thucydides
> “The brain is the most powerful weapon in the world.”
― David Goggins
> “Man, the bravest of animals, and the one most accustomed to suffering, does not repudiate suffering as such; he desires it, he even seeks it out, provided he is shown a meaning for it, a purpose of suffering. The meaninglessness of suffering, not suffering itself, was the curse that lay over mankind so far.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
> "Consciousness is awareness with a choice."
― Thomas Campbell
> “The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.”
― Epictetus
> “It’s most real, it’s most good and it’s most salvific - it saves you, it transforms you. That’s the sacred.”
— John Vervaeke
> “It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”
― Epictetus
> “Evolution is a process of iteration. There’s no master plan. It’s in each moment of what happens.”
― Michael Behrens
> “Don’t follow anybody and don’t accept anyone as a teacher, except when you become your own teacher and disciple.”
― Jiddu Krishnamurti
> “This is your life. You’re accountable. What are you gonna do about that?”
― James Hollis
By the way, if you enjoyed these quotes, feel free to follow a little side project of mine: [Stoic Resurrection](https://linktr.ee/stoic_resurrection)
*Peace & Love,*
*[Kontext](https://linktr.ee/mckontext)*
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