life on planet earth on Toughness

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel (1629–1719) was a legendary Scottish Highland chieftain, famously reputed to have killed the last wolf in Scotland. Known for his fierce leadership and rugged Highland spir...

Brett Favre was a driven man. He explained to USA Today that his father’s message that he was never good enough drove him to become one of the best quarterbacks in NFL history…His dad had also been hi...

These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because ...

Major Harold Kushner was a prisoner of the Viet Cong for more than five years. Kushner describes one of his fellow American prisoners, a tough twenty-four-year-old Marine who had made a deal with thei...

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.

Resilience is not about becoming smarter or tougher; it’s about becoming stronger and more flexible. It’s about becoming tempered. Which takes us back to the blacksmith’s shop. Tempered. Let the word ...

I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hul...

The principal act of courage is to endure and withstand dangers doggedly rather than to attack them.

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear – not absence of fear.

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

I suspect that this is the most important thing I’ve said in all my interviews and talks as well as in this book. It’s a truth that applies to more than writing. It applies to anything that is importa...

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

I recently heard a story about a race in which one runner had a significant lead over the rest of the field. As the man rounded the final turn, the crowd roared as he inched closer and closer to the f...

It’s human nature to resist change—particularly when it comes in the form of adversity or challenges. But change is inevitable, and developing the trait of resilience helps us not only survive change,...

Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible—not to have run away.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.

Excellent things are as difficult as they are rare.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?

Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live, taking the form of a readiness to die.

The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are the...

She thought that she had never before had a chance to realize the strength that human beings have, to endure; she loved and revered all those who had ever suffered, even those who had failed to endure...

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without co...

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wo...

The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth i...