Mardy Grothe - Neverisms

in War As I Knew It (1947)

This became a popular quotation after the publication of Patton’s autobiography, but it became a signature line after it appeared in the 1970 film Patton, with George C. Scott in the title role. When speaking to troops, Patton often spoke neveristically. In his 1996 biography Patton: A Genius for War, Carlo D’Este wrote about the iconic general:His exhortations were a series of “nevers”: Never give up; never dig in; never defend, always attack; never worry about defeat, think of and plan only for victory; you win by never losing. He would caution that to win a battle a man had to make his mind run his body because the body will always give up from exhaustion. But when you are tired, the enemy is just as exhausted: “Never let the enemy rest.”

Never think you know all.

Though others may flatter you, retain the courage to say, “I am ignorant.”

Never be proud.IVAN PAVLOV, in a 1936 magazine article

aimed at Russian science students

Never react emotionally to criticism.NORMAN VINCENT PEALE, from

The Positive Principle Today (2003)

Peale added: “Analyze yourself to determine whether it is justified. If it is, correct yourself. Otherwise, go on about your business.” The book also included these additional attempts at dissuasion:

Never use the word “impossible” seriously again.

Toss it into the verbal wastebasket.

Never think negatively,

for the negative thinker does a very dangerous thing.

He pumps out negative thoughts into the world around him

and thus activates the world negatively.

Never forget that all the enthusiasm you need is in your mind.

Let it out—let it live—let it motivate you.

Never let your ego get so close to your position

that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.COLIN POWELL, citing a valuable maxim

I’ve seen this quotation attributed to Powell for so many years that I was surprised to discover he did not author it. In his 1995 autobiography My American Journey, he wrote that he first heard the saying in 1979, while he was helping his old boss Charles Duncan make the transition from Deputy Secretary of Defense to Secretary of Energy in the Carter administration. During a heated debate, a lawyer on the transition team walked off in a huff after losing an argument. Powell watched as Bernard Wruble, another lawyer on the team, walked over to the man and said: “You forgot what you learned in law school. Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.” The saying resonated with Powell—who later adopted it as a motto—and he credited Wruble with making “a permanent contribution to my philosophy.” The original author of the saying is not known, but Powell gets credit for popularizing it. In a 1988 Working Woman article, Van Gordon Sauter, the former president of CBS News, offered a similar thought:

Never allow your sense of self to become associated with your sense of job.

If your job vanishes, your self doesn’t.

One must never fail to pronounce moral judgment.AYN RAND, in The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

Writing in an era when “being judgmental” was disparaged, Rand offered a powerful challenge, arguing that the very idea of neutrality in the realm of human behavior and moral values was “an abdication of moral responsibility.” As a replacement for the biblical precept “Judge not, that ye be not judged,” Rand suggested a pithy alternative: “Judge, and be prepared to be judged.”

Never lose interest in life and the world.

Never allow yourself to become annoyed.JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

These were two of ten “Rules of Living” that the sixty-year-old Rockefeller formulated in 1899 (others included, “Get plenty of sleep” and “Don’t overdo things”). He guided his life by the rules until his death in 1937 at age ninety-seven.

Never be above asking for advice from those competent to give it . . .

and never affect to understand what you do not understand thoroughly.CHARLES ARTHUR RUSSELL,

Lord Chief Justice of England (1894–1900)

Never say there is nothing beautiful in the world anymore.ALBERT SCHWEITZER, in The Schweitzer Album (1965)

Schweitzer, one of the foremost ethical leaders of the twentieth century, added: “There is always something to make you wonder, in the shape of a leaf, the trembling of a tree.”

Never stagnate.

Life is a constant becoming: all stages lead to the beginning of others.GEORGE BERNARD SHAW,

in an 1897 letter to Ellen Terry

Here is a psychological suggestion for acquiring peace of soul.

Never brag, never talk about yourself,

never rush to first seats at table or in a theater,

never use people for your own advantage,

never lord it over others as if you were better than they.FULTON J. SHEEN, in On Being Human:

Reflections of Life and Living (1982)

Bishop Sheen added: “These are but popular ways of expressing the virtue of humility, which does not consist so much in humbling ourselves before others as it does in recognizing our own littleness in comparison to what we ought to be.”

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it;

never desert your line of talent.

Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.SYDNEY SMITH, quoted in Pushing to the Front,

an 1896 book by Orison Swett Marden

Never think that you’re not good enough yourself.

A man should never think that.

People will take you very much at your own reckoning.ANTHONY TROLLOPE, from a character in his

1864 novel The Small House at Allington

One must never let the fire go out in one’s soul, but keep it burning.VINCENT VAN GOGH,

in an 1878 letter to his brother Theo

Never let work drive you; master it and keep in complete control.BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, quoted in

Speeches of Booker T. Washington (1932)

Never dream of forcing men into the ways of God.JOHN WESLEY

Wesley, an Anglican clergyman who founded Methodism, added:Think yourself, and let think. Use no constraint in matters of religion. Even those who are farthest out of the way never compel to come in by any other means than reason, truth, and love.

Unlike so many of his fervid contemporaries, Wesley eschewed a doctrinaire approach to religion. He urged his followers: “Beware you are not a fiery, persecuting enthusiast.”

Never swallow anything whole.ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD,

in a 1944 conversation

“To swallow” literally means to ingest through the mouth and throat, but since the late sixteenth century has been extended to mean “to believe uncritically or accept without question.” This sense of the word shows up in sayings like “it was hard to swallow” or “he swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.” Whitehead added:We live . . . by half-truths and get along fairly well as long as we do not mistake them for whole-truths, but when we do mistake them, they raise the devil with us.

Albert Schweitzer was thinking similarly when he wrote: “To blindly accept a truth one has never reflected upon retards the advance of reason.”

Never love anything that can’t love you back.BRUCE WILLIAMS, American radio personality

This is one of Williams’s personal maxims—and a beautiful way of making the point that we should never place more importance on possessions than we do on people.

Never lose sight of the fact that old age needs so little

but needs that little so much.MARGARET WILLOUR, quoted in Reader’s Digest (1982)

Never let a crisis go to waste.FAREED ZAKARIA

Zakaria, an Indian-born American journalist and television news host, offered this in a December 2008 Newsweek essay. He may have been inspired by a remark made six months earlier by Stanford University economist Paul Romer, who piggybacked on the motto of the United Negro College Fund to observe, “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” The underlying idea also showed up in remarks made by Rahm Emanuel, the newly named White House chief of staff, shortly after the 2008 presidential election. In a New York Times column, Emanuel was quoted as saying, “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” All of these observations were stimulated by the financial meltdown occurring at the time, and they were all anticipated by a famous 1959 observation from John F. Kennedy: “When written in Chinese, the word crisis is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.”