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Bits and Pieces
Compiled by Azaad Iqbal
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The purpose of
education is to teach a person to reason. Education itself provides only
knowledge.
 That’s important, but it’s not the key to everything.
Knowledge must be applied. The manner in which we apply wisdom and
knowledge is called reason. Without the ability to reason, all other
things become valueless. We have never sufficiently emphasised the real
value of being able to reason and think as compared with the ability to
study and remember what we read. The ability to reason and think
explains why some men and women without much formal education manage to
achieve places of importance and leadership in the world.
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Problems - seemingly
insoluble, irritating, and aggravating problems - are the birthplace of
new ideas. Duncan Hines was a printing salesman who had a hard time
finding decent places to eat while he was travelling his territory.
Realising others had the same problem, he started sending out Christmas
cards to his friends who were on the road, recommending good places to
eat. The demand for them became so great that recommending good food for
travellers became his career. In the years before he died, his lodging
and restaurant guides sold millions of copies. Even today, his name is
perpetuated on supermarket shelves in a whole line of prepared baking
mixes.
J.D. Dole realised in 1932 that he had a major problem. He had more
pineapples growing than he could sell in conventional ways. He had to
find new ways to sell them. His solution was making pineapple juice and
getting people to drink it. William G. Fargo, one of the founders of
Wells, Fargo & Company, who subsequently became president of the
American Express Company, took a European trip in 1891 and became
furious at the time it took to have his letter of credit cleared at
every stop. The result: Travellers Cheques.
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 All of us would like to
have old friends. But have you ever stopped to think that old friends
are not made in a hurry? If you would like to have such friends in the
years to come, you had better start making new friends now. Sturdy
friends, like sturdy beams, take time to season. Go at this matter
thoughtfully. Select persons you feel pretty sure could be the kind of
friends you can prize in later years. Then start the gentle, gradual
seasoning process. How? Ralph Waldo Emerson gave us the answer: The only
way to have a friend is to be a friend.
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Great ideas need
landing gear as well as wings.
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You can buy people’s
time; you can buy their physical presence at a given place; you can even
buy a measured number of their skilled muscular motions per hour. But
you cannot buy enthusiasm, you cannot buy loyalty, you cannot buy the
devotion of hearts, minds, or souls. You must earn these.
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One of these days is
none of these days.
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Behold the turtle; he
makes progress only when he sticks his neck out. These words by James
Byrant Conant have special meaning for writer James Michener. In 1944,
when Michener was nearly 40, he was serving in the U.S. Navy on a remote
island in the South Pacific. To kill time, he decided to write a book.
He knew that the chances of anyone’s publishing it were practically nil.
But he decided to stick his neck out and give it a try. He had decided
that the book would be a collection of short stories. A friend told him
that nobody publishes short stories anymore. Even so, he stuck his neck
out and went ahead. The book was published and it got a few reviews, but
Orville Prescott, the book reviewer for The New York Times, reported
that he liked the stories. Others decided they liked the book too, and
it wound up winning a Pulitzer Prize.
Kenneth McKenna, whose job was to evaluate books for a Hollywood film
company, tried to persuade his company to make a movie out of it, but
the company decided the book “had no dramatic possibilities.” So McKenna
stuck his neck out and brought the book to the attention of composers
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. When Broadway cynics heard
that Rodgers and Hammerstein were planning a musical called South
Pacific, they guffawed and said: “Have you heard about this screwy idea?
The romantic lead is going to be a guy past 50. An opera singer named
Ezio Pinza!” Everyone knows what happened after that. “You can
understand,” said Michener, “why I like people who stick their necks
out.”
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The difference between
a successful career and a mediocre one sometimes consists of leaving
four or five things a day unsaid.
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There is a four-word
formula for success that applies equally well to organisations or
individuals: Make yourself more useful.
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There are two things
needed in these days: first, for rich people to find out how poor people
live; and second, for poor people to know how rich people work.
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Helen R. returned to
work after raising her children. She got a job as a salesperson in a
department store and was placed in the “bargain basement.” A few months
later, she was promoted, moved upstairs, and given a raise. She
continued to receive promotions and raises, and now she’s a successful
retail executive. How did she do it?
She had the right attitude. When she started, she noticed other
salesclerks ignoring customers, hiding or pretending they were busy when
customers approached. She listened as her co-workers joked about hoping
one would walk into their departments. On the other hand, Helen
considered each day a challenge. When she saw a customer approach, she
considered it an opportunity to make a new friend. She helped them
choose merchandise, she asked questions, and she found that many of them
had fascinating stories to tell. Helen succeeded because she considered
her job fun. She looked at each day as a new adventure. She thought of
customers not as nuisances, but people who could enrich her own
experience. And she looked forward to the challenge of pinpointing their
needs and providing the exact product to suit them. It wasn’t too long
before customers walked into the bargain basement and asked for Helen by
name.
What’s your attitude towards selling? When you start each day, do you
dread the thought of calling on prospects and customers? Would you
rather run and hide than call on a buyer you know is particularly
difficult? If you have little enthusiasm, think of selling as an
adventure. Consider each difficult prospect a challenge, each customer
as an individual who enhances your own experience. You may find it
easier to get up in the morning - and up in the world.
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There are two insults
people won’t endure: the assertion that they have no sense of humour and
the doubly impertinent assertion that they have never known trouble.
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To be what we are, and
to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life -
Robert Louis Stevenson.
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John Masefield, poet
laureate of England from 1930 until his death in 1967, ran away to sea
early in his teens. After four or five years, he quit the sea and began
working in a carpet factory in Yonkers, New York, while he tried to
learn how to write. He had just read Keats and Shelley for the first
time and was consumed with desire to be a poet. But he found it much
more difficult than climbing masts and painting decks. He almost gave up
in despair before he discovered this homespun sentiment by an unknown
writer:
Sitting still and wishing
Makes no person great.
The good lord sends the fishing
But you must dig the bait.
“This easily remembered stanza somehow gave me the courage I needed to
go on,” he later wrote. “I dug bait for months - and I finally caught a
publisher who accepted my first poem.”
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