The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

- James Stockdale

A liberally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear.

- James Stockdale

I think character is permanent, and issues are transient.

- James Stockdale

It is in disaster, not success, that the heros and the bums really get sorted out.

- James Stockdale

Leadership must be based on goodwill. Goodwill does not mean posturing and, least of all, pandering to the mob. It means obvious and wholehearted com…

- James Stockdale

Do the right thing even if it means dying like a dog when no one's there to see you do it.

- James Stockdale

Entitlement and privelege corrupt.

- James Stockdale

The worst thing that can happen is death, and that's not the worst thing in the world either.

- James Stockdale

Great leaders gain authority by giving it away.

- James Stockdale