Wings of Fire

by A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts. For they have their own thoughts."

a good student could learn more from a bad teacher than a poor student from even a skilled teacher.

"To succeed in life and achieve results, you must understand and master three mighty forces— desire, belief, and expectation."

"He who knows others is learned, but the wise one is the one who knows himself. Learning without wisdom is of no use."

Desire, when it stems from the heart and spirit, when it is pure and intense, possesses awesome electromagnetic energy. This energy is released into the ether each night, as the mind falls into the sleep state. Each morning it returns to the conscious state reinforced with the cosmic currents. That which has been imaged will surely and certainly be manifested. You can rely, young man, upon this ageless promise as surely as you can rely upon the eternally unbroken promise of sunrise... and of Spring.

I learned that once your mind stretches to a new level it never goes back to its original dimension.

I reminded myself that the best way to win was to not need to win. The best performances are accomplished when you are relaxed and free of doubt.

What makes life in Indian organizations difficult is the widespread prevalence of this very contemptuous pride. It stops us from listening to our juniors, subordinates and people down the line. You cannot expect a person to deliver results if you humiliate him, nor can you expect him to be creative if you abuse him or despise him. The line between firmness and harshness, between strong leadership and bullying, between discipline and vindictiveness is very fine, but it has to be drawn. Unfortunately, the only line prominently drawn in our country today is between the 'heroes' and the 'zeros'. On one side are a few hundred 'heroes' keeping nine hundred and fifty million people down on the other side. This situation has to be changed.

Rocketry was reborn in India thanks to the technological vision of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Prof. Sarabhai took the challenge of giving physical dimensions to this dream. Very many individuals with myopic vision questioned the relevance of space activities in a newly independent nation which was finding it difficult to feed its population. But neither Prime Minister Nehru nor Prof. Sarabhai had any ambiguity of purpose. Their vision was very clear: if Indians were to play a meaningful role in the community of nations, they must be second to none in the application of advanced technologies to their real-life problems. They had no intention of using it merely as a means to display our might.

it was a quotation from George Bernard Shaw. The gist of the quote was that all reasonable men adapt themselves to the world. Only a few unreasonable ones persist in trying to adapt the world to themselves. All progress in the world depends on these unreasonable men and their innovative and often non-conformist actions.

A quotation from General George Patton was given as a counterpoint to this myth—that a good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.

these lines from a little-known poet of the nineteenth-century crossed my mind: For all your days prepare And meet them ever alike When you are the anvil, bear - When you are the hammer, strike.

I have always considered the price of perfection prohibitive and allowed mistakes as a part of the learning process. I prefer a dash of daring and persistence to perfection. I have always supported learning on the part of my team members by paying vigilant attention to each of their attempts, be they successful or unsuccessful.

How good is a leader? No better than his people and their commitment and participation in the project as full partners!

Beautiful hands are those that do Work that is earnest and brave and true Moment by moment The long day through.

I had written somewhere in my diary of that period: If you want to leave your footprints On the sands of time Do not drag your feet.

What can one do to strengthen personal freedom? I would like to share with you two techniques I adopt in this regard. First, by building your own education and skills. Knowledge is a tangible asset, quite often the most important tool in your work. The more up-to-date the knowledge you possess, the freer you are. Knowledge cannot be taken away from anyone except by obsolescence. A leader can only be free to lead his team if he keeps abreast of all that is happening around him—in real time. To lead, in a way, is to engage in continuing education. In many countries, it is normal for professionals to go to college several nights every week. To be a successful team leader, one has to stay back after the din and clutter of a working day to emerge better-equipped and ready to face a new day. The second way is to develop a passion for personal responsibility. The sovereign way to personal freedom is to help determine the forces that determine you. Be active! Take on responsibility! Work for the things you believe in. If you do not, you are surrendering your fate to others. The historian Edith Hamilton wrote of ancient Greece, "When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again". The truth is that there is a great deal that most of us can individually do to increase our freedom. We can combat the forces that threaten to oppress us. We can fortify ourselves with the qualities and conditions that promote indi...

On my return from France, after successfully testing the SLV-3 apogee motor, Dr Brahm Prakash informed me one day about the arrival of Wernher von Braun. Everybody working in rocketry knows of von Braun, who made the lethal V-2 missiles that devastated London in the Second World War. In the final stages of the War, von Braun was captured by the Allied Forces. As a tribute to his genius, von Braun was given a top position in the rocketry programme at NASA. Working for the US Army, von Braun produced the landmark Jupiter missile, which was the first IRBM with a 3000 km range. When I was asked by Dr Brahm Prakash to receive von Braun at Madras and escort him to Thumba, I was naturally excited. The V-2 missile (an abbreviation of the German word Vergeltungswaffe) was by far the greatest single achievement in the history of rockets and missiles. It was the culmination of the efforts made by von Braun and his team in the VFR (Society for Space Flight) in the 1920s. What had begun as a civilian effort soon became an official army one, and von Braun became the technical director of the German Missile Laboratory at Kummersdorf. The first V-2 missile was first tested unsuccessfully in June 1942. It toppled over on to its side and exploded. But on 16 August 1942, it became the first missile to exceed the speed of sound. Under the supervision of von Braun, more than 10,000 V-2 missiles were produced between April and October 1944 at the gigantic under-ground production unit near Nordh...

Flow is a by-product of controlled creativity. The first requirement is to work as hard as you can at something that presents a challenge and is approved by your heart. It may not be an overwhelming challenge, but one that stretches you a little, something that makes you realise that you are performing a task better today than you did yesterday, or the last time you tried to do it. Another prerequisite for being in flow is the availability of a significant span of uninterrupted time. In my experience, it is difficult to switch into the flow state in less than half an hour. And it is almost impossible if you are bedevilled by interruptions.

To live only for some unknown future is superficial. It is like climbing a mountain to reach the peak without experiencing its sides. The sides of the mountain sustain life, not the peak. This is where things grow, experience is gained, and technologies are mastered. The importance of the peak lies only in the fact that it defines the sides. So I went on towards the top, but always experiencing the sides. I had a long way to go but I was in no hurry. I went in little steps—just one step after another—but each step towards the top.

Let craft, ambition, spite, Be quenched in Reason's night, Till weakness turn to might, Till what is dark be light, Till what is wrong be right! Lewis Carroll

I had read at St. Joseph's that an electron may appear as a particle or wave depending on how you look at it. If you ask a particle question, it will give you a particle answer; if you ask a wave question, it will give you a wave answer.

A basic aspect of a person's working style is how he plans and organizes tasks. At one extreme is the cautious planner, who carefully spells out each step before making any move. With a sharp eye for what can possibly go wrong, he tries to cover all contingencies. At the other end is the fast mover, who weaves and dodges without a plan. Inspired by an idea, the fast mover is always ready for action. Another aspect of a person's working style is control—the energy and attention devoted to ensuring that things happen in a certain way. At one extreme is the tight controller, a strict administrator with frequent checkpoints. Rules and policies are to be followed with religious fervour. At the opposite end are those who move with freedom and flexibility. They have little patience for bureaucracy. They delegate easily and give their subordinates wide latitude for movement. I wanted leaders who tread the middle path, those who could control without stifling dissent or being rigid.

"What you imagine, is what will transpire. What you believe is what you will achieve,"

if you need to write a letter to a work centre, send a fax; if you need to send a telex or fax, telephone; and if the need arises for telephonic discussions, visit the place personally.

I still remember one young man telling me, "There is no big shot in our team, how will we be able to break through?" I told him, "A big shot is a little shot who keeps on shooting, so keep trying."

It has been my personal experience that the true flavour, the real fun, the continuous excitement of work lie in the process of doing it rather than in having it over and done with. To return to the four basic factors that I am convinced are involved in successful outcomes: goal-setting, positive thinking, visualizing, and believing.

When a person looks at himself, he is likely to misjudge what he finds. He sees only his intentions. Most people have good intentions and hence conclude that whatever they are doing is good. It is difficult for an individual to objectively judge his actions, which may be, and often are, contradictory to his good intentions. Most people come to work with the intention of doing it. Many of them do their work in a manner they find convenient and leave for home in the evening with a sense of satisfaction. They do not evaluate their performance, only their intentions. It is assumed that because an individual has worked with the intention of finishing his work in time, if delays occurred, they were due to reasons beyond his control. He had no intention of causing the delay. But if his action or inaction caused that delay, was it not intentional? Looking back on my days as a young scientist, I am aware that one of the most constant and powerful urges I experienced was my desire to be more than what I was at that moment. I desired to feel more, learn more, express more. I desired to grow, improve, purify, expand. I never used any outside influence to advance my career. All I had was the inner urge to seek more within myself. The key to my motivation has always been to look at how far I had still to go rather than how far I had come. After all, what is life but a mixture of unsolved problems, ambiguous victories, and amorphous defeats? The trouble is that we often merely analyse li...

To motivate people to enhance their performance and deal with depression is always a challenge for a leader. I have observed an analogy between a force field equilibrium and resistance to change in organizations. Let us imagine change to be a coiled spring in a field of opposing forces, such that some forces support change and others resist it. By increasing the supportive forces such as supervisory pressure, prospects of career growth and monetary benefits or decreasing the resisting forces such as group norms, social rewards, and work avoidance, the situation can be directed towards the desired result—but for a short time only, and that too only to a certain extent. After a while the resisting forces push back with greater force as they are compressed even more tightly. Therefore, a better approach would be to decrease the resisting force in such a manner that there is no concomittant increase in the supporting forces. In this way, less energy will be needed to bring about and maintain change. The result of the forces I mentioned above, is motive. It is a force which is internal to the individual and forms the basis of his behaviour in the work environment. In my experience, most people possess a strong inner drive for growth, competence, and self-actualization. The problem, however, has been the lack of a work environment that stimulates and permits them to give full expression to this drive. Leaders can create a high productivity level by providing the appropriate orga...

Now, besides the renewal of manpower, emphasis had to be laid on augmenting the strength of project groups. Often people seek to satisfy their social, egoistic, and self-actualization needs at their workplaces. A good leader must identify two different sets of environmental features. One, which satisfies a person's needs and the other, which creates dissatisfaction with his work. We have already observed that people look for those characteristics in their work that relate to the values and goals which they consider important as giving meaning to their lives. If a job meets the employees' need for achievement, recognition, responsibility, growth and advancement, they will work hard to achieve goals. Once the work is satisfying, a person then looks at the environment and circumstances in the workplace. He observes the policies of the administration, qualities of his leader, security, status and working conditions. Then, he correlates these factors to the interpersonal relations he has with his peers and examines his personal life in the light of these factors. It is the agglomerate of all these aspects that decides the degree and quality of a person's effort and performance.