Page 128 - Napoleon Hill Think and Grow Rich Full Book | Success Learned

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NAPOLEON HILL THINK AND GROW RICH

Let one of your first decisions be to KEEP A CLOSED MOUTH AND OPEN EARS
AND EYES. As a reminder to yourself to follow this advice, it will be helpful if
you copy the following epigram in large letters and place it where you will see it
daily.

"TELL THE WORLD WHAT YOU INTEND TO DO, BUT FIRST SHOW

IT."

This is the equivalent of saying that "deeds, and not words, are what count
most."

FREEDOM OR DEATH ON A DECISION

The value of decisions depends upon the courage required to render them. The
great decisions, which served as the foundation of civilization, were reached by
assuming great risks, which often meant the possibility of death.

Lincoln's decision to issue his famous Proclamation of Emancipation, which gave
freedom to the colored people of America, was rendered with full understand-
ing that his act would turn thousands of friends and political supporters against
him. He knew, too, that the carrying out of that proclamation would mean death
to thousands of men on the battlefield. In the end, it cost Lincoln his life. That
required courage.

Socrates' decision to drink the cup of poison, rather than compromise in his per-
sonal belief, was a decision of courage. It turned Time ahead a thousand years,
and gave to people then unborn, the right to freedom of thought and of speech.

The decision of Gen. Robert E. Lee, when he came to the parting of the way with
the Union, and took up the cause of the South, was a decision of courage, for he
well knew that it might cost him his own life, that it would surely cost the lives of
others.

But, the greatest decision of all time, as far as any American citizen is concerned,
was reached in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776, when fifty-six men signed their names
to a document, which they well knew would bring freedom to all Americans, or
leave every one of the fifty-six hanging from a gallows!

You have heard of this famous document, but you may not have drawn from it the
great lesson in personal achievement it so plainly taught.