Remember never to compromise. Compromise is absolutely against my whole vision.
You see the people. They are miserable because they have compromised on every point, and they cannot forgive themselves because they have compromised. They know that they could have dared, but they proved cowards. In their own eyes they have fallen, they have lost self-respect; that's what compromise does.
Why should one compromise? What have we got to lose? In this small life, live as totally as possible. Don't be afraid of going to the extreme, you cannot go more than total, that is the last line; and don't compromise. Your whole mind will go for compromise because that's how we have been brought up, conditioned.
Compromise is one of the most ugly words in our language. It means, "I give half, you give half; I settle for half, you settle for half." But why? When you can have the whole, when you can eat the cake and have it too, then why compromise?
Just a little courage, just a little daring -- and only in the beginning. Once you have experienced the beauty of non-compromising and the dignity that it brings, and the joy, and the integrity, and the individuality, for the first time you feel that you have roots, that you have a center, that you live out of your own, you don't live like a businessman -- living life like a businessman is prostitution.
Live like a warrior.
This way or that, but never compromising. It is better to be defeated, but totally, than to be victorious through a compromise; that victory will not give you anything except humiliation, and the defeat without compromise will still give you dignity.
Life is mysterious.
-Osho, “The Transmission of the Lamp, #17”