“The way Boss put it, being a clean athlete was everything. He told me not to trust people. To stay humble.

Knowing how things are doesn’t make you see them correctly, doesn’t stop you from seeing things incorrectly. Stare at the image as much as you like, it’s all in vain. It will never surrender the truth, not to your naked eyes; you have to go in armed with a straightedge.

Chapter Eight: Thriving as a Fallible Human being

“For me, losing a tennis match isn’t failure. It’s research.—Billie Jean King

Complaining is not a strategy. You have to work with the world as you find it, not as you would have it be.

—Jeff Bezos

Strengths of character result from habit. . . . We acquire them just as we acquire skills. . . We become builders, for instance, by building, and we become harpists by playing the harp. So too we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.

—Aristotle.