“True toughness is quiet and comes deep from within. It’s about making the right choice under stress, uncertainty, and fatigue. It requires emotional control: cultivating the power to respond—not react—and making thoughtful, deliberate decisions during pressure-filled situations.”
- Steve Magness

“A narrow identity makes heavy demands of consistency, upon you and also upon the wider world… But the world is always changing, in ways that we cannot predict.”
- Alexander Douglas, Essence is Fluttering (2025)

“To make men, we must have ideals—broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living—not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold.”
- W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903)

“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
- Sophocles, Antigone (442 BC)

“Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.”
- John Milton, Areopagitica (1644)