Songfacts®:

• In this song, Rise Against frontman Tim McIlrath is both emboldened and paranoid, determined to fight the forces of deception:
  
  What we are is the sum of a thousand lies
  What we know is almost nothing at all
  
  The song could relate to a soldier at war carrying a huge burden for an unjust cause. That's the theme of another song on the Appeal To Reason album, "Hero Of War."
• Guitarist Zach Blair told Ultimate-Guitar how this song's dark tone was created accidentally: "On 'The Strength to Go On,' Jason Livermore, the engineer, hadn't killed the signal to one of the cabinets out in the control room. And he had muted it in the room so we were listening to the track, but we were listening to the track so loud it was vibrating the strings of the guitar. And so it was kinda doing this real low-end feedbacky kind of hum for the entire time and accidentally he printed it. So, when we listened back to the song again, we kept hearing this in the background and it was perfect for the song. It was more of a darker song; I think the song was tuned to a dropped D and it totally worked for the song."