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Kindle Notes & Highlights
“A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.”
Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write.
If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you.
Reading sheds light on the dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present.
“To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour.”
When things go wrong, a leader must stand by those who made the decision under extreme pressure and with incomplete information. Initiative and audacity must be supported, whether or not successful.
Leaders must shelter those challenging nonconformists and mavericks who make institutions uncomfortable; otherwise you wash out innovation.
Nothing can inspire others more than our ability to make our own democracy work.
