Knowledge, Inspiration, and Energy

Success, to be really meaningful, means more than a stable income: It means inner happiness and satisfaction. There is nothing so ultimately dissatisfying as the lackluster quality of mediocrity. Yet mediocrity is all one will achieve if what he learns in school is not combined with inspiration and energy.

We live today in a fact-finding age. Everyone’s assumption seems to be that if there are enough facts at one’s disposal, he will be—ta da!—a success in life....

Those who are best at whatever they do rely on their own inner strength and discrimination. The success that is achieved by complete reliance on the “wisdom” of others, or on the information gathered, sifted, and passed on as the ultimate word of authority, produces a color no more interesting than gray. There have been countless people in the past whose reputation in the present is owed largely to the patina of antiquity.

The real keys to success are three in number: knowledge, intuition, and energy. Many highly educated people, lacking the other two qualities, plod along more or less mindlessly. Their labor is soulless. Whether they earn a good living, or work at low-paying jobs, they will never succeed in developing their own higher potential.

Genius and exceptional ability of any kind never move along well-worn tracks. I am not teaching you how to be a genius, but I do urge you not to trudge along deeply rutted tracks, either. If you want to be really successful in any field, never let your first question be, “What has been done already in this field?” Ask, rather, “What are the greatest present needs in this field?” Outstanding people live not in the past, but in the present tense. Intellectual knowledge is based on past discoveries. Because such knowledge inclines people to look backward in time, it doesn’t often invite present inspiration. Passive dependence on knowledge is both limited and self-limiting.