By Jack Canfield 白汀 选注
Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.
Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his technique. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.
Colonel Sanders had the construction of a new road put him out of business in 1967. He went to over 1,000 places trying to sell his chicken recipe before he found a buyer interested in his 11 herbs and spices. Seven years later, at the age of 75, Colonel Sanders sold his fried chicken company for a finger-licking $15 million!
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas. Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.
Charles Darwin, father of the theory of evolution, gave up a medical career and was told by his father, “You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching.” In his autobiography , Darwin wrote, “I was considered by my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect.
Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn’t read until he was seven. His teacher described him as “mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams.” He was refused admittance to Zurich Polytechnic School. The University of Bern turned down his Ph.D. dissertation as being irrelevant and fanciful.
The movie Star Wars was rejected by every movie studio in Hollywood before 20th-Century Fox finally produced it. It went on to be one of the largest grossing movies in film history. Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15 out of 22 in chemistry.
When General Douglas MacArthur applied for admission to West Point, he was turned down, not once but twice. But he tried a third time, was accepted and marched into the history books.
After Fred Astaire’s first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, said, “Can’t act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!” Astaire kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.
The father of the sculptor Rodin said, “I have an idiot for a son.” Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of art. His uncle called him uneducable.
Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.
Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970. By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.
Margaret Mitchell’s classic Gone with the Wind was turned down by more than twenty-five publishers.
In 1954, Jimmy Denny, manager of the Grand Ole Opry, fired Elvis Presley after one performance. He told Presley, “You ain’t goin’ nowhere… son. You ought to go back to driving a truck.” Elvis Presley went on to become the most popular singer in America.
Never give up believing in yourself!
1 Henry Ford: 亨利?福特（1863—1947），1903年创建福特汽车公司，享有“汽车大王”的美誉。
2 Beethoven: 贝多芬（1770—1827）, 德国最伟大的作曲家之一。
3 Colonel Sanders: 桑德斯上校，1939年桑德斯研发出一套由11种香料组合而成的独家炸鸡配方，1952年他在美国的肯塔基州创建了肯德基炸鸡餐厅，后发展为全球连锁的快餐厅。have a construction of a new road: 在这里是比喻用法，指掌握了一种新方法；out of business: 破产的，失业的。
4 figer-licking: 让人垂涎三尺的，作者借用了肯德基著名的广告语“It’s figer-licking good!（好吃到你吃完要舔手指头）”中的finger-licking，衍生出了这个意思。
5 Walt Disney: 沃尔特?迪斯尼（1901—1966），创造了米老鼠、唐老鸭等一系列家喻户晓的卡通形象，创办了迪斯尼