https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/stockdale-paradox/
Brett & Kate McKay • October 27, 2025
The Stockdale Paradox: A Philosophic Principle for Tough Times
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Years later, when his plane was shot down and he was imprisoned in the infamous POW camp known as the “Hanoi Hilton,” Epictetus’s Enchiridion would become a survival manual for Stockdale and the men he led. It would also help birth a guiding principle that got Stockdale through seven and a half years — four of them in solitary confinement — of torture and debasement: what’s now called the “Stockdale Paradox.”
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Stockdale paused and said:
You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
That single sentence became known as the Stockdale Paradox.
In practice, it meant living in two opposing realities at once: facing the brutal truth of the moment while maintaining unbreakable faith in the eventual positive outcome.
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Brutal honesty and unshakeable faith?
Not sure that if presented with a test like the Hanoi Hilton, then I could conduct myself so well. One can only hope. I’d pray make my “tests” small in proportion to my character.
I remember the “Perot – Stockdale” ticket.
I can’t look into Ross Perot’s soul but I believe he was there as a “spoiler” to allow Bill Clinton to defeat both Bush and Bob Dole. Near the end of the campaign, I remember Perot’s antics to distroy his chances of winning. To me it was an obvious prize fighter’s “dive” because the fix was in.
It’s a shame and a national disgrace that “democracy” is really an “oligarchy”. The Dead Old White Guys must be rolling over.
Sigh!
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