“We are defined by how we use our power.”

“Life and those who rear us teach lessons that break us. How we reassemble the broken pieces defines what we become.”

“Where we choose to be, where we choose to be--we have the power to determine that in our lives. We cannot reel time backward or forward, but we can take ourselves to the place that defines our being.”

“The language others speak to us, from childhood, shapes the attitudes and beliefs that ground how we use all our powers of action.”

“We all lose sometimes. We fail to get what we want. Friends and loved ones leave. We make a decision we regret. We try our hardest and come up short. It's not the losing that defines us. It's how we lose. It's what we do afterward.”

“Mistakes don't have to define us. They're how we learn and grow. They show us who and what we don't want to be. It's why they're mistakes.”

“The thoughts we choose to act upon define us to others, the ones we do not define us to ourselves.”

“Its our actions that define us. What we choose. What we resist. What we're willing to die for.”

“On reflection, it is not even clear if military power is a transitive relationship. Until we have defined more explicitly how we are going to measure military power, it is not clear that if A is more powerful than B, and B more powerful than C, that A is more powerful than C.”

“We are free to withdraw (to withdraw our minds where we cannot withdraw our bodies) from situations in which our humanity or lack of it is defined for us.”