I heard him speak once. There was solidness in this man that I think was forged during his captivity.

One of the few speakers I have heard the impressed me like this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080510/...le_christening

It's sad that Stockdale is likely to be most remembered for the one thing he did wrong than the many things he did right.

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No one ever asks whether the glass is too big!

"stockdale...flew 201 carrier-based missions before being shot down in 1965,"

dam.

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The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the public alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

HL Mencken (1923)

That's cake compared to 7 1/2 years as a POW. Putting it in perspective, I'd be willing to bet the majority of Americans today couldn't take 60 days without flipping out.

That's inner strength and THEN some.

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“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” - Edmund Burke

Not counting what he did to himself so as not to be used as propaganda.

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"Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the United States was too strong."

President Ronald Reagan

“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism”

Barry Goldwater

day after day they bombed useless targets. just because a prez was to afraid to kill Russians.

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Life Liberty and the pursuit of all who threaten it