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Hope It’s all you have when you realize you are not entirely in control of outcomes. But without it, how else do we cope with the challenges of life?
But there is another kind of hope—it’s the challenge of learning about the real world and using our intelligence to change things for the better. In this way, it’s the individual who is empowered to bring hope to the world.
The people who fail in life are those whose ambitions were insufficient to overcome all the forces that work against them. And yes, failure is common to us all. But ambitious people use their failures as lessons to heed, as they push forward toward their goals. Don’t fear change. Don’t fear failure. The only thing to fear is loss of ambition. But if you’ve got plenty of that, then you have nothing to fear at all.
Beyond the judgments of others Rising high above the sky Lies the power of ambition
IQ correlates nicely with GPA in high school and college, but after your first job, nobody ever asks what your college GPA was. What matters are your people skills, leadership skills, real-world problem solving skills, integrity, business acumen, reliability, ambition, work ethic, kindness, compassion, etc.
because I love what I do, I am self-driven and incentivized to make myself better at it every day—without limit.
One objective reality is that our government doesn’t work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters. As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.
since we have video of strange phenomena—video that we take to be generally reliable, reminding us again of what the “U” in UFO stands for. Once you confess to not knowing what you are looking at, no logical line of reasoning allows you to then declare that you know what you are looking at. And that includes assertions that the flying shapes “must be” intelligent, technologically advanced aliens from distant planets secretly observing the behavior of Earthlings. You simply bear insufficient evidence to make that jump, however tempting it may be.
Since any two people in the world have a common ancestor—depending on how far back you look, the line we draw to establish family lineage is entirely arbitrary. When I wonder what I am capable of as a human being, I don’t look to “relatives,” I look to all human beings. That is the genetic relationship that matters to me. The genius of Isaac Newton, the courage of Joan of Arc and Gandhi, the athletic feats of Michael Jordan, the oratorical skills of Sir Winston Churchill, the compassion of Mother Teresa. I look to the entire human race for inspiration for what I can be—because I am human. I
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The most enduring thing about being human is the discovery of cosmic truths that transcend culture, politics, religion, and time, forming the corpus of knowledge and wisdom that we call civilization.
Of course that which is right in the world is not always (hardly ever) a popularity contest. Principles can, should, and do matter without regard to sheer numbers of adherents.
Consider instead Galileo’s dictumfn4: “In my mind God wrote two books. The first book is the Bible, where humans can find the answers to their questions on values and morals. The second book of God is the book of nature, which allows humans to use observation and experiment to answer our own questions about the universe.”
My personal goal is to leave the world a little better off for my having lived in it. The prospect of making this come true drives my work habits daily.
never forget that the only people who are any good at what they do in life are those who are passionate and persistent.
as often as I can, I seek out people smarter than I am to talk to and hang out with.
I do not worry about what they know as much as I worry about how they think. This just might be the highest of all pedagogical goals, because the most important moments in life occur at times when how we think will matter more than what we know. Teaching someone how to think is hard, and takes more effort on the part of the teacher and student. Among other things, it encourages them to ask questions. It involves being comfortable with ignorance, if that happens to be our collective state of knowledge at
the time. It involves experiment and inquiry.
Striving to do what is right, without regard to who takes notice, should be a model for us all.
in life, it’s not good enough to be right. You also must be effective.
