How Do We Know

26

HAVE A STRONG CLEAR PURPOSE

There is no road to success but through a strong dear purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, advancement of every sort.

—T. T. MUNGER

Purpose is defined as “something one intends to get or do; intention, aim.” Munger, an American clergyman (1830-1910), emphasized that the road to success, in any field, is paved with high aims. Tryon Edwards contributed a supporting thought: “High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.” We should, for our own good, be able to identify those among us who possess a clear strong purpose. This can be aided—made easier—by reflecting on those poor souls who are afflicted with low—hellish—aims or purposes.

Wrote James Russell Lowell: “Not failure but low aim is crime.”

In all of my 27 books I have emphasized time and time again that, in the politico-economic realm, none have a lower aim than those who seek coercive power in order to cast others in their pitiful, little images. Know-it-alls!

So, to avoid unnecessary repetition, I shall quote what others have had to say about low ambitions.

The man who . . . seeks all things, wherever he goes, reaps from the hopes which he sows, a harvest of barren regrets.

—Bulwer-Lytton

Fling away ambition. By that sin angels fell. How then can man, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

—Shakespeare

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices. So climbing is performed in the same posture as creeping.

—Jonathan Swift

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

—Thomas Otway

Striving for fame and popularity fall into this same ignoble category.

Munger’s “road to success” is consistent with the dictionary’s definition of success: “a favorable or satisfactory outcome, or result.” But success has its risks. Ever so many wise men have assessed individual success as having a pitiful effect—fat-headed-ness—the I-am-it syndrome. “Nothing fails like success,” wrote Dean Inge; and Benjamin Franklin observed that “Success has ruined many a man.” And it has!

Franklin, on another occasion, used a clever aphorism, somewhat of an aboutface: “Success after forty is working for it like sixty.” Many an individual, after achieving success during the vigorous years, is inclined to rest on his or her laurels. This is to fall by the wayside, to call it quits, to think of life’s mission as already accomplished—creative action in the past tense. One must avoid such catastrophic nonsense and regard youthful success merely as the foundation for improvement—growth—in all of life’s tomorrows.

When we discover that each individual is unique—not remotely like any other—each person being the best judge of the field in which his growth is most promising, we will all do our best to see that freedom of choice is maximized—liberty for one and all!

Wrote Albert Einstein: “A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them.” What a truism by this great scientist! According to this definition, I am a successful man, for I work to advance a cause which I believe is uppermost among mankind’s countless goals—trying better to understand and explain the freedom way of life.

Do I receive incomparably more from others than they from me? Trillions of times more! From whence comes the pen with which I write? Not from any one person but from the tens of thousands who had a tiny part in its making. Reflect on the countless individuals who had a part in the food you and I eat, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the planes on which we travel, our telephones which can send our voices around the world in one-seventh of a second! I, as any other person, cannot even scratch the surface in recognizing our incomparable blessings!

Were enough persons aware of Einstein’s truth, liberty would prevail. Why this assertion? They would reject any and all obstacles to the free flow of the trillions times trillions of blessings that account for our existence.

Andrew Carnegie, founder of United States Steel and one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs and philanthropists—only nine months of schooling—wrote: “I believe the true road to prominent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.” Carnegie practiced what he preached, a laudable virtue—constancy of purpose! Thomas Carlyle wrote: “A man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder—a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God [Creation] has given you.”

To conclude, no one ever knows for certain who first spoke or wrote helpful truths. Here is one generally attributed to Emerson and also claimed by Elbert Hubbard: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbors, though he build his home in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” “The world,” as here used, is a metaphor, meaning unusually large numbers, not everyone on earth.

As to a better book, millions beat a path to those who wrote the Holy Bible. Reflect on the numbers who over the decades beat a path to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and who have beaten and still are beating a path to Weaver’s The Mainspring of Human Progress, Bastiat’s The Law and ever so many others.

Sermons? How about “The Sermon on the Mount”? And the millions who are attracted to the moral and spiritual Perfection of Jesus? The law of attraction at its best!

Or build a better mouse-trap? Again, a metaphor! Individuals exercising their unique capabilities to achieve their full potential.

Let us try everlastingly to move ahead on the road to success. The guideline? If at first you don’t succeed try and try again!