It is the instinct to seize an opportunity when it presents itself that perhaps sets apart the self-made filthy rich from the comfortably poor, the willingness to ignore conventional wisdom and risk everything on what others consider to be folly. One could even argue that it hardly mattered that young Henry Ford was drawn to automobiles, or that Ruben Rausing chose packaging, or that Bill Gates gravitated to software to create those vast fortunes. I would be open to persuasion that had their roles, and the century in which they lived, been reversed, they would have done just as well and raised
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