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Do Not Accept Half-Confidences! (Podcast)
One of John Paul Jones’s leadership principles was this: don’t accept “half-confidences” from people. This was discussed in the essay on his leadership principles. This means that if you are in charge, you have a right to expect people to give you a reasonable chance at doing the job. If you are being constantly questioned,…
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Some Leadership Principles Of John Paul Jones, In His Own Words
I have lately had the pleasure to read some of John Paul Jones’s correspondence during the American Revolution. It was a surprise to me how many notables he communicated with—not just with his political superiors, but with Benjamin Franklin, the King of France, Lafayette, and many others.
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The Ruses Of Diocles, Agnon, And Pindar
Wisdom is neither easily found, nor painlessly acquired. If we seek it out, it is likely to present itself to the prospector in a way that conceals its true utility. In the same way that precious metals and gems are distributed unevenly and clandestinely among geologic sediments, so is wisdom often submerged in quantities of…
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The Wisdom Of Spurinna
On April 28, 2022, the news service NewsNation published a story about the commercial use of artificial intelligence to “recreate” the deceased on a virtual level, and permit people to have “conversations” with these electronic reanimations.
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See The Throat, And Latch On To It
The Roman lawyer and government official Pliny the Younger wrote a fascinating letter to the historian Cornelius Tacitus that has fortunately been preserved for posterity (Letters I.20). The topic discussed is whether it is better to deliver a long speech, or a short one. Pliny says he has often debated this subject with a learned…
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You Have Agency (Podcast)
There are some who see themselves as twigs spinning endlessly in mighty rivers, or as tufts of grass being blown around by the winds. There are also some who see ambiguity in everything, and refuse to draw meaningful conclusions about events right in front of their noses. This view is not only crippling to morale,…
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No Example, No Trust
The emperor Julius Valerius Maiorianus, known to English-speaking posterity as Majorian, was a vigorous and able sovereign. He is conceded to have been one of the last western Roman leaders who made an energetic effort to maintain and improve the empire’s institutions. Even Gibbon, who usually had only snide comments for the later occupants of…
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Our Actions Direct The Waters Of Fortune
There are many men who lack a certain sense of awe and grandeur at the inscrutable workings of Nature. They are apt to favor crank theories instead of considered judgments; and they recline in negativity and pessimism when the time comes for them to perform in the face of adversity. They lack faith in the…
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Silence: A Fable (Podcast Reading Of A Tale By Edgar Allan Poe)
This podcast is a reading of the short story “Silence: A Fable” by Edgar Allan Poe. Published in 1838, it is a very short, mysterious prose poem with evocative imagery and dark symbolism. After the reading, we discuss a possible interpretation of the tale.
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You Don’t Know To A Certainty (Podcast)
Some guys look upon knowledge with a purely utilitarian view. They think that if something is not helping them that very instant, then it has no value. This view is shortsighted and terribly wrong. You never know what life has in store for you, and if you’re presented with an opportunity to learn, you take…
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The Captives Of The “Starry Crown”
The Canadian explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who lived from 1879 to 1962, changed his birth name when he was in college. He was originally known as William Stephenson, and was born in Manitoba, Canada. His biographers do not know exactly what prompted him to make such a startling reinvention of identity.
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Lost In The Lapse Of Years
The name Jacob August Riis is an obscure one today, known only perhaps to scholars of American journalism and photography. He was a Danish-American journalist, and he lived from 1849 to May 26, 1914. He produced excellent work in his day; his photographs of the New York slums were influential in helping promote social reforms…
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I Am A Whirlwind, I Am War And Deluge
The philosopher Philo of Alexandria, in the second book of his treatise On Dreams (II.18.123), relates a story about a despotic governor of Egypt. “It is only a very short time ago,” he says, “that I knew a man of very high rank, one who was prefect and governor of Egypt, who, after he had…
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The Kings Of Nothing
The war between Julius Caesar and Pompey engulfed the Roman world between 49 and 48 B.C. Historians, seeking concision and brevity at the expense of accuracy, call it a “civil war”; and in one sense it is. But to those who lived through it, or fell under the long shadow of its aftershocks, it was…
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All Men Seek Their Divine Origins
By 331 B.C. Alexander the Great had reached Egypt and brought it under his control. He already had a string of incredible military victories to his credit, including those at Granicus, Issus, and Tyre. He must have sensed, in the marrow of his bones, that he possessed some indefinable quality that separated him from other…
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Apelles, The Greatest Painter Of Antiquity
Painting is a perishable art. Pigment fades and flakes with the centuries; and the passage of millennia leaves us nothing of painting but dust and memories. From antiquity have survived statues, tombs, mosaics, some murals here and there, artifacts of all kinds, and the sublime monuments of architecture; but of the great Greek and Roman…
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Acknowledging The Debts To Our Predecessors
In his treatise On the Nature of the Gods, Cicero points out a shameful personal weakness of the philosopher Epicurus. What was this character flaw? It was Epicurus’s congenital inability to admit that he had ever been influenced by the thinkers that preceded him. Cicero states:
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Heaven And Hell Can Change Places Very Quickly (Podcast)
Most people never realize that good fortune can be suddenly and brutally replaced by bad fortune. What once seemed like heaven can quickly be transformed into a hell. The reverse is also true: a man can find himself in terrible straits, but can extricate himself through consistent efforts, and reach a kind of “heaven.” This…
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What Was It That Allowed Odysseus To Return Home?
Oliver Stone’s memoir Chasing the Light, which I began reading two weeks ago, relates an interesting anecdote. After returning from military service in Vietnam, the future director enrolled in film school at New York University; one of the classes he attended, taught by a professor named Tim Leahy, dealt with classical drama.
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Disaster And Heroism At Maiwand
On July 27, 1880, General George Burrows led just under 2,500 British and Indian troops into the field near Maiwand, Afghanistan, to intercept an Afghan force led by Ayub Khan. Burrows, however, was not aware that he was confronting a force that numbered around 25,000 Afghan warriors. The terrible engagement that followed, known to history…
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Clausewitz’s “Coup d’Oeil”: That Special Knack (Podcast)
The military theorist Carl Von Clausewitz used the term coup d’oeil to describe a special, innate ability to grasp the military possibilities presented by a specific situation. We may broaden this idea to describe an instinctive talent in some field of endeavor. Each of us possesses a special skill that distinguishes us from others; too…
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On Whether Alexander Could Have Conquered Rome
It is said that after Alexander the Great completed his conquests in Asia, he intended eventually to turn his gaze westward to the Mediterranean region, and bring those lands under his control. Death, of course, overtook him before he could begin this campaign. Either the lingering effects of his battlefield wounds, or his dissolute living…
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The Moral Corruption Of The Elites
The military historian Polyaenus, in his Stratagems of War (II.17), relates the following anecdote. There was once a man named Dinias, the son of Telesippus, who lived in the city of Cranon, which is located in the region of Thessaly in Greece. He was originally from the town of Pheraea. He was a poor man,…
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Focusing On What Matters (Podcast)
In this podcast we discuss the importance of focusing on what matters, not on what does not matter. We illustrate this principle with a few anecdotes.
Original copy of Cicero’s De Officiis (On Duties) published in Holland in 1642. From the collection of Fortress of the Mind.
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