Thinking Beyond a Head

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

— Marcel Proust, in Life 101, John-Rogers & Peter McWilliams, p. 6. 

Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.
— Tallulah Bankhead, in Ibid., p. 26. 

     As John Kenneth Galbraith pointed out, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.”

     Firmness of mind, to a point, is a good thing. It keeps us from being wishy-washy, swayed by every new bit of information that comes our way. Carried beyond a certain point, however, the mind becomes closed to any new information from any source. The closed mind is, obviously, not open to learning. Learning is the assimilation and integration of new ideas, concepts and behaviors.

— John-Rogers & Peter McWilliams, Life 101, p. 31.

     As humans, we seem to be the students of the people who know more than we do, doers with the people who know just about as much as we do, and teachers of the people who know less than we do. Life is a process of learning, doing and teaching.

— John-Rogers & Peter McWilliams, in Ibid., p. 343.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

— James M. Barrie, in The Portable Curmudgeon Redux, Jon Winokur, p. 192.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

— Mark Twain, in Ibid., p. 192.

I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.

— Samuel Johnson, in Ibid., p. 197.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

— Bertrand Russell, in Ibid., p. 317.

Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

— Leo Tolstoy, in Ibid., p. 317.

     Innovation is often thought of as creativity. But as Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt points out, the difference between creativity and innovation is the difference between thinking about getting things done in the world and getting things done. Says Professor Levitt, “Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.”

—Michael E. Gerber, The E Myth, pp. 73-74.

     Reality only exists in someone’s perceptions, attitudes, beliefs, conclusions — whatever you wish to call those positions of the mind from which all expectations arise — and nowhere else.

     So the famous dictum which says, “Find a need and fill it” is, in fact, inaccurate. It should say, “Find a perceived need and fill it.” Because if your customer doesn’t perceive he needs something, he doesn’t, even if he actually does. Get it?

—Michael E. Gerber, Ibid., p. 138.