This is a quote from Elbert Hubbard, an American philosopher who died in 1915.
INITIATIVE
“THE WORLD BESTOWS ITS BIG PRIZES, both in money and honors, for but one thing. And that is Initiative.
What is Initiative? I’ll tell you: It is doing the right thing without being told.
But next to doing the thing without being told is to do it when you are told once. That is to say, “carry the *Message to Garcia“: those who can carry a message get high honors, but their pay is not always in proportion.
Next, there are those who never do a thing until they are told twice: such get no honors and small pay.
Next, there are those who do the right thing only when Necessity kicks them from behind, and these get indifference instead of honors, and a pittance for pay. This kind spends most of its time polishing a bench with a hard-luck story.
Then, still lower down in the scale than this, we have the fellow who will not do the right thing even when someone goes along to show him how and stays to see that he does it: he is always out of a job, and receives the contempt he deserves….
To which class do you belong?”
*BTW, the reference of the “Message to Garcia” is from an essay Hubbard wrote about during the U.S. war with Spain. The President needed to get a message to Calixto Garcia, who was in the jungles of Cuba, and someone said that a soldier, Rowan, could do it. Rowan took the assignment with no questions, got on a boat, walked into the jungle, and emerged 3 weeks later with the mission accomplished. “A Message to Garcia” was published in 1899 and sold 40 million copies, mostly due to the fact that it was distributed among business employees, countless soldiers during both world wars, and even schoolchildren, as a motivational guide in teaching people to show more initiative, and to “just get the job done”.
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