INTRODUCTION TO THE MASTER MIND 101COMMENTARY
Henry Ford, as cited often, is one example. Another is Albert Einstein, who could
barely eke out a living as a patent clerk until he began organizing his knowledge
of physics. And U.S. President Harry S. Truman had nothing more than a high school
education. He laughed once that he was such a poor speller that when he wrote the
word dictionary, "1 had to look on the back to see how to spell the book itself. " But
all of these men commanded power in different ways.The Uses oj Learning
The successful lawyer is not necessarily the one who memorizes the
greatest number of the principles of law. On the contrary, the successful
lawyer is the one who knows where to find a principle of law, plus a
variety of opinions supporting that principle, which fit the immediate
needs of a given case.
In other words, the successful lawyer is the one who knows where
to find the law he or she wants when needed.
This principle applies, with equal force, to the affairs of industry
and business.
Henry Ford had but little elementary schooling, yet he is one of the
best-educated men in the world because he has acquired the ability to
combine natural and economic laws, to say nothing of the minds of
other men, that he has the power to get anything of a material nature
he wants.
During the First World War, Mr. Ford brought suit against the
Chicago Tribune, charging the newspaper with libelous publication of
statements about him, one of which was that Ford was an "ignoramus;'
an ignorant pacifist, and so forth.
When the suit came up for trial, the attorneys for the Tribune
undertook to prove, through Ford himself, that their statement was
true, that he was indeed ignorant, and with this object in view they
catechized and cross-examined him on all manner of subjects.