Of course the world forces us all to compromise with our environment to some extent, and we only waste our strength if we fight pitched battles for points which are not worth a skirmish. It is only a faddist who refuses to conform with conventions of dress and the like. But our sincerity should be Roman about things that really matter to us.
And I am still in doubt, as I write these words, as to how far it is right to employ strategy and diplomacy in order to gain one’s point. The great men of the world have stood up and taken their medicine …
Adaptation to one’s environment makes for a sort of survival; but after all, the supreme victory is only won by those who prove themselves of so much harder stuff than the rest that no power on Earth is able to destroy them. The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
Confessions, Aleister Crowley
Setemheb 