A man doesn't amount to something because he has been successful at a third-rate career like journalism. It is evidence, that's all: evidence that if he buckled down and worked hard, he might some day do something really worth doing.
Politicians don't make things—they occasionally have ideas and mostly see them frustrated. But at Cadbury-Schweppes, you can actually go into a factory and see something come out the other end, like a bottle of tonic water or a bar of chocolate. It is a completely different feeling.
Observing the difference between politics and working in the private sector:
The real champions in life are so humble and gracious. They just continue doing what they do without all the posturing. If you've got the real thing, you don't have to flaunt a loud imitation.
A man's college and university degrees mean nothing to me until I see what he is able to do with them.
When some one boasted that at the Pythian games he had vanquished men, Diogenes replied, "Nay, I defeat men, you defeat slaves."
Pretension may sit still, but cannot act. Pretension never feigned an act of real greatness. Pretension never wrote an Iliad, nordrove back Xerxes, nor christianized the world, nor abolished slavery.
The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it's the real thing.
The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd.
People don't care about what someone says about you in a movie - or even what you say, right? They care about what you build. And if you can make something that makes people's life better, then that's something that's really good.
I'll tell you this about the Oscars - they're real.
True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can any feigned thing be lasting.
Self-knowledge is the foundation of real success.