George Washington Carver
8 Rules To Live By
I’ll be honest: before doing a bit of research, the only thing I knew about George Washington Carver was that he found lots of uses for peanuts.
Turns out he was an amazing man. Not only a brilliant, inquisitive, scientific mind, but a strong will and sense of purpose to match.
One of the unexpected treasures I discovered were from a thank you letter he’d written to his students. Usually presented as an excerpt of “8 Cardinal Virtues” as follows:
- Be clean both inside and out.
- Neither look up to the rich nor down on the poor.
- Lose, if need be, without squealing.
- Win without bragging.
- Always be considerate of women, children, and older people.
- Be too brave to lie.
- Be too generous to cheat.
- Take your share of the world and let others take theirs.
Good rules to live by, and it will serve me well to remember them.
If you’d like to discover more, the National Parks Service has an excellent PDF about George Washington Carver, including the full original text of the letter (on page 24) – available here:
Discovering George Washington Carver — A Man of Character
… and of course there’s a pretty good Wikipedia entry here:
Wikipedia: George Washington Carver
One more parting quote that speaks to me as an artist:
When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world.
— George Washington Carver
All content written and voiced by Joe J Thomas online at: JoeActor.com
