Mistakes

Think you’re the only one that’s made mistakes? Hardly.

Imagine if you had been the president of a Michigan bank who advised Henry Ford’s lawyer not to invest in the new motor company, assuring him, “The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty.”

Or there was Gary Cooper’s comment about Clark Gable accepting the role of Rhett Butler which he had turned down: “‘Gone With the Wind’ is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I’m just glad it’ll be Clark Gable who’s falling flat on his face and not Gary Cooper.”

Or the Boston sportswriter who summed up young Ted Williams by saying, “I don’t believe this kid will ever hit half a singer midget’s weight in a bathing suit.” Whatever that meant, he was most certainly wrong!

We all make mistakes, including the experts. The key is not to live in the mistakes of the past but to move forward, learning from those mistakes.


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Sir Edmund Hillary, who attempted to scale Mount Everest, lost one of the members of his team in the failed effort. He returned to a hero’s welcome in London, England, where a banquet held in his honor was attended by the lords and ladies and powerful people of the British Empire. Behind the speakers’ platform were huge blown-up photographs of Mount Everest. When Hillary arose to receive the acclaim of the distinguished audience, he turned around and faced the mountain and said, “Mount Everest, you have defeated me. But I will return. And I will defeat you. Because you can’t get any bigger and I can.”

-From Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do


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