Richard Galbraith

In our society, we too often rank the value of a job by how much we paid for doing it, rather than by how important it really is.

a) Which person does more to benefit our town:  A doctor who sets the bones of people who slipped on the ice, or a boy who shovels the sidewalk well enough that the people don’t fall?

b)  I actually enjoy my trips to haul my garbage and recyclables to the town dump.  It’s not because I like handling garbage; it is because the workers are always friendly and...

I wish I could maintain this attitude.  I really do want to improve, and if I am the one who figures out what I am doing wrong, I am pretty good at changing to correct the problem.  Yet if someone came up to me and said, “Let me tell you what is wrong with you,” I wouldn’t want to hear it.

Since other people are a lot like me: How can I give advice in a way that they will want to follow it?  Telling someone what he should do sounds an awful lot like “Let me tell you what is wrong w...

The message that I get from a person who is cussing is that he is too angry to be thinking straight.  Why would anyone heed the words of someone who isn’t thinking straight?

No matter how much someone irritates me, if I want my ideas to be understood, I need to choose words that will build a bridge connecting that person to me.  If I sound like a thoughtful friend, he will listen and consider what I have to say (unless he is too angry to be thinking straight).

    Movies and TV often spend most of their time building up to a disaster that is averted by a grand heroic action at the end.  That is not the way the real world gets improved.  Most lasting improvements grow from small individual acts that encourage others to take similar actions. 

For example, the federal Fair Housing Act would never have passed Congress unless a large numbers of individuals across the country had formed friendships with members of other racial groups.  It doesn’t tak...

Nobody can be the best at everything, but each of us has some strong points.  One key to personal success is making the most of our strengths so we have an area of true excellence.  One key to successful leadership is recognizing the strengths of others so our group can reap the benefits of their excellence.

Don’t pay too much attention to averages.  Many people drown in rivers that have an average depth of less than two feet when they step out of the part that is few inches deep and fal...

Fear raises its ugly head when we are confronted by situations that we aren’t sure that we can handle.  Fear makes us want to avoid the things that we are afraid of.  But, the fear is not inherent in the thing we are facing; it rises out of our doubts.  Madame Curie’s advice is to seek to understand the scary things so that we learn how to handle them.  Understanding will eliminate the fear and expand our comfort zone.  For example, since I understand how lightning works, I can shield m...

Napoleon is often portrayed as an egotistical military genius, but here he is quoted as saying that everybody (together) is wiser than the greatest genius.  Maybe we shouldn’t be looking for a wise man to follow when we could be taking advantage of the collective wisdom of all the people around us.

Like the Honduran farmer in the picture, Jimi Hendrix was not a highly educated man.  So it may seem strange to quote a rebellious rock musician as a source of wisdom.  Yet, he seems to have captured a truth that escapes many “experts.”

Knowledge is information that can be given out by simply talking and explaining.  Wisdom is more complicated; it requires knowing the best choice that can be made in a given situation.  Since every situation is unique in some way, telling what I have le...