ANDREW BERNSTEIN

Nothing is given to man on earth - struggle is built into the nature of life, and conflict is possible - the hero is the man who lets no obstacle prevent him from pursuing the values he has chosen.

A hero has faced it all: he need not be undefeated, but he must be undaunted.

A hero holds purposes appropriate to man and is, therefore, a thinker.

First, he must hold rational values, and to do this he must be a thinker.

... statism systematically violates the rights of individuals and is, therefore, immoral. Because it suppresses the mind and violates men's rights, it thereby causes abysmal poverty and is utterly impractical.

Stress is never a given. There are people who get divorced amicably. There are people who pack up and move with no emotional toll. There is no stressor 'out there' in the world. We experience stress - or we don't - depending on what we believe.

The truth is that stress doesn't come from your boss, your kids, your spouse, traffic jams, health challenges, or other circumstances. It comes from your thoughts about these circumstances.

You might think that shifting your thoughts is as easy as setting your mind to it. But stressful thoughts aren't held in place through choice or will power. They're held in place through perceived truth value.

When a friend is sick, I see the situation for what it is, not what it isn't, and I offer to help as much as she wants, not as much as I want.

The elusive truth is that there is nothing stress-producing in the physical world. Things simply are. Molecules move. Light and sound appear.

Throughout history, independent minds have carried mankind forward. Whether they identified how to make fire or manufacture tools, develop rational philosophy or create man-glorifying art, pioneer scientific knowledge or invent the electric light, independent thinkers have created the goods on which human life and prosperity depend.

For the first time in history, the rational and the good are fully armed in the battle against evil. Here we finally find the answer to our paradox; now we can understand the nature of the social power held by evil. Ultimately, the evil, the irrational, truly has no power. The evil men’s control of morality is transient; it lives on borrowed time made possible only by the errors of the good. In time, as more honest men grasp the truth, evil’s stranglehold will be easily broken.

If you're successful and stressed out, you're succeeding in spite of your stress, not because of it.

The hero is valorous because he stands up to every threat directed against his values. Heroism requires value conflict.

Some people are so used to experiencing stress that they don't remember what life was like without it.

The number of stressors has multiplied exponentially: traffic, money, success, work/life balance, the economy, the environment, parenting, family conflict, relationships, disease. As the nature of human life has become far more complicated, our ancient stress response hasn't been able to keep up.

Find the beliefs that are strangling your feelings, challenge them for your sake as well as theirs, and see how it feels to love someone without a thought about the future, simply for who they are today.

The less you think counterfactually, the less you experience stress. Stress, in this light, isn't a bad thing. It's simply a warning system telling you that your mind has lost touch with what's real.

During the financial crisis, I worked with hundreds of executives who struggled as a result of their thoughts about job security. When their beliefs changed, so did their emotional experience - and they were then able to focus on the task at hand more effectively.

Many argue that Christianity is "different" from other religions - that it is primarily about love of one's fellow man. The Crusades, The Inquisition, Calvin's Geneva all prove that this is not the case. These events were pre-eminently about obedience to authority.

Stress is the negative whirlwind of emotions that gets imposed on top of our stimulation and engagement.

Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations.

To believe that your husband, wife, parents, kids, boss, job, bank account, or body is even partly responsible for your emotions, to think that there are bullets 'out there' that you have to contend with, that there are stressful life events to overcome, is to miss something vital.

Negative thoughts stick around because we believe them, not because we want them or choose them.