I have known men who could see through the motivations of others with the skill of a clairvoyant; only to prove blind to their own mistakes. I have been one of those men.
During my eighty-seven years I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.
Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all…
A man sentenced to death obtained a reprieve by assuring the king he would teach his majesty’s horse to fly within the year – on the condition that if he didn’t succeed, he would be put to death at the end of the year. “Within a year,” the man explained later.
