Thoughts to Build On

could find out first, so that what they thought, said, and
did, would be right. There is no advantage in being wrong
-even if you're wrong first. It is much more profitable to
take the time required-and be right later.
All governments are full of people busily
doing wrong things, deciding on wrong policies, and ex-
pensively carrying them out in the wrong way, with the
wrong results. Our own nation's history is a long record of
how to do things wrong-not because we didn't try-but
because we didn't find out.
Business makes a big project of doing things
wrong. Maybe computers will help. But my experience
with computers doesn't bear out that hopeful conclusion.
When a computer makes a mistake it is so astronomical or
so repetitive that a hundred people doing things wrong
couldn't equal it. I have spent my life in business. I'm
retired now, so I have plenty of time to look back on all
the mistakes I made. I even have analyzed them. Sort
of post-mortem. I have concluded that all the many mis-
takes I made could have been avoided simply by finding
out.
Education is supposed to be devoted to finding
out-and that's good. The trouble is that education doesn't
start at the beginning. The ultimate purpose of education
should be to enable you to succeed-and I define success as
the attainment of your goal in life. To do this, education
must first provide you with three fundamentals:
( 1) INSPIRE you with real, believable facts
which will convince you that you can and
will succeed.