The High Price Of Leadership

  There is a single reason why 99 of 100 average businessmen never become leaders. That is their unwillingness to pay the price of responsibility. By the price of responsibility I mean hard, driving, continuous work ... the courage to make decisions ... the scourging honesty of never fooling yourself about yourself. You travel the road to leadership heavily laden. While the nine-to-five-o'clock worker takes his ease, you are 'toiling upward through the night.' Laboriously you extend your mental frontiers. Any new effort, the psychologists say, wears a new groove in the brain. And the grooves that lead to the heights are not made between nine and five. They are burned in by midnight oil. - Owen D. Young