Pow Stockdale Quotes

Stockdale Paradox This finding is named after Admiral James Stockdale, winner of the Medal of Honor, who survived seven years in a Vietcong POW camp by hanging on to two contradictory beliefs: His life couldn’t be worse at the moment, and his life would someday be better than ever. Like Stockdale, people at the good-to-great companies in our research confronted the most brutal facts of their current reality, yet simultaneously maintained absolute faith that they would prevail in the end. And they held both disciplines—faith and facts—at the same time, all the time.

Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” — James Stockdale (Vietnam POW survivor, American Hero, and Stoic)

When Collins asked Stockdale which POWs didn’t make it out, Stockdale responded, “That’s easy. The optimists.” The optimists were the prisoners who believed and would say that the North Vietnamese were going to release the POWs by Christmas. When it did not happen by Christmas, they would say it was going to happen by Easter, then by Thanksgiving. Eventually the optimists would die of a “broken heart.

The test of character is not 'hanging in there' when you expect light at the end of the tunnel, but performance of DUTY and persistence of EXAMPLE when you know that no light is coming.