My best mentor is a mechanic - and he never left the sixth grade. By any competency measure, he doesn't have it. But the perspective he brings to me and my life is, bar none, the most helpful.
Interpretation
True wisdom can come from unexpected sources, not just formal education.
This quote highlights the idea that valuable insights and mentorship can come from individuals regardless of their academic background. The speaker values the unique perspective and practical wisdom that their mechanic mentor provides, showcasing that life experiences often offer the deepest lessons, far beyond conventional metrics of competence and education.
In practice
In a graduation speech emphasizing unconventional learning.
Inexperienced personal development teachers always tell you to visualize, but often in a tragically limited way. They tell you to visualize nothing but victory. But high-achievers know that it's even more important to visualize themselves at the point where they want to quit, and then see themselves working through the struggle.
Raise your ambition beyond where you're capable of now. There's nothing about my hometown that said I'd be working with Fortune 50 CEO's, Olympians, at the highest level.
I tell them that if they will occupy themselves with the study of mathematics they will find in it the best remedy against the lusts of the flesh.
Simplicity is the key to brilliance.
Small things start us in new ways of thinking
It is easier to do a job right than to explain why you didn't.
Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
It's very liberating when you finally realize it's impossible to make everyone like you.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.