Tag Archives: Humility

Deep Humility

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A newly promoted military officer was ecstatic to discover that he had just merited his first private office. On his first day on the job, he sat down in his chair and surveyed his desk, his bookshelves, and his very own telephone.  A moment later, as he looked out his window, he noticed a private heading his direction.  As the… Read more »

Be Considerate

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Conrad Hilton, founder of the hotel empire that bears his name, was once Johnny Carson’s guest on The Tonight Show. At one point Carson said, “If you could look into that camera and say just one thing to America, what would it be?” Hilton turned and looked into the camera.  He said, “Please remember to put the shower curtain on… Read more »

The Smartest Person in the Room

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Linus Pauling was always the smartest person in the room.  These days we hear the word “genius” associated with people who excel at making omelets, organizing birthday parties, and playing fantasy football.  Pauling, who was born in 1901, was an old school genius – a brilliant scientist with unrivalled powers of deduction and imagination.  His 1931 paper, The Nature of… Read more »

Early Warnings

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On two occasions more than 40 years ago, the whole world almost had a very bad day. At mid-morning on November 9, 1979, watch officers at the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) inside Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, were shocked to see their early warning screens glowing with the unmistakable images of 1,400 Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles streaking toward the United… Read more »

Four Magic Words

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Four weeks ago America lost its most famous test pilot.    Chuck Yeager, who lived to be 97, was the first human being confirmed to have exceeded Mach 1, piloting the Bell X-1 jet faster than the speed of sound in 1947.  A few years later, when Yeager was testing an F-86 Sabre, he executed a roll – a standard… Read more »