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great man and leader of men. i’ve made a habit of studying the people i consider great and tried to learn from them. i’ve noticed, like Patton i think, that many people seem to live entirely in their fears (from Patton’s Principles by Williamson):

“Any man who is afraid to die will never really live.”

my dad, a marine vet of the war in the pacific against the Japanese, said something similar to me once. “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only once.”

continuing with some more Willamson quotes from Patton:

“The person who cannot face death has truly never faced life because every day of life is a day closer to death. To take counsel of fears about death is to destroy every day of living.”

“There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is time to never listen to any fear.”

“The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead! Every plan you make in war is going to be a live or die decision....Since we are not afraid to do either there is no reason to take counsel of our fears.”

maybe a lot of people are afraid to take command or make a hard decision because they are afraid of being wrong—afraid of the responsibility for failure (this was my early weakness as a younger man). clearly Gen Patton was not afraid of failure and not afraid of taking responsibility for his decisions.

“”””“A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man only once.”””””

I took that saying to heart as a kid as a life truth and combined with a lot of luck it gave me a life of adventure and close calls, people have to be willing to take risks, because that is where the fun is, not to mention that as you grow and your character forms, bad guys sense it and it becomes a part of your aura or presence, it makes you a force that you can carry into the dark corners of an adventurous life.