The Lincoln Times

DALE CARNEGIE
Author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People"

SUCCESS CALLS FOR ATTACKS

In 1929 there was an event in Chicago which attracted the most brilliant educators in the country. People came for thousands of miles for the occasion.. Not a football game; not a political powwow. No. the occasion was the inauguration of a young man of thirty as president of the fourth richest university in this country: the University of Chicago; a university with an endowment of seventy million dollars.

The young man who was to be inaugurated as president had worked his way. through Yale as a waiter. But now the great sat at his feet: Robert Maynard Hutchins.

I was not there, but I got a glimpse of it from the late Dr. Jefferson Davis Sandefer, formerly president of Hardin-Simmons university, Abilene, Texas. Doctor Sandefer sat on the platform next to the father of the new president. Turning to him he said, "I notice that one of the newspapers made a bitter attack on your son today."

This was stating it mildly, for young Doctor Hutchins' had not only been attacked by the newspapers and by the educational bigwigs, but had been bitterly denounced.

Doctor Hutchins' father sat for a moment, thinking, then said quietly "Yes. that's true. But remember, no one ever kicks a dead dog."

Remember that the next time someone attacks you.

The moment you raise your head even slightly above the water level of mediocrity, you will discover a lot of jealous. envious critics on the banks of the river ready to throw mud balls at you. Some of the mud balls will have rocks inside. So if you accomplish anything in the world, expect to be attacked, denounced, condemned. That was the fate of Robert Maynard Hutchins, of Abraham Lincoln, of Socrates. and of all the good, capable, and great men who ever lived.