The Wisdom Chronicle is designed to bring nuggets of wisdom from the dozens of books I read every year in all genres. Each week, I endeavor to share the best of what I have gleaned. The determination of relevance lies with you. Blessings, Jim Whiddon

81. OUR NATION “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

82. COMPETITION “Being the one who makes your product, process, or service obsolete is the only way to prevent your competitor from doing so.”

Excerpt From: Peter F. Drucker. “The Daily Drucker.”

83. TEAM “Being on the Team vs. Being a Teammate:

Being on the team benefits your personal goals and ambitions. Being a teammate benefits the goals and ambitions of your team and your teammates.

Being on the team can make you a bystander. Teammates intervene in the lives and actions of their teammates.

Being on the team involves personal effort. Being a teammate involves the efforts of every player.

Being on the team means doing what is asked of you. Being a teammate is doing whatever is needed for the team to succeed.

Being on the team can involve blaming others and making excuses. Being a teammate involves accepting responsibility, accountability, and ownership of the team’s problems.

Being on the team makes you “me-optic,” asking what’s in it for me? Being a teammate makes you “we-optic,” asking what’s in it for us?

Sometimes players on the team are drawn together by common interests; teammates are drawn together by a common mission.

Sometimes players on a team like one another; teammates respect one another.

Sometimes players on a team bond together because of a shared background or compatible personalities; teammates bond together because they recognize every player is needed to accomplish the goal of the team.

Sometimes players on a team are energized by emotions; teammates energize one another out of commitment.”

Excerpt From: Joe Ehrmann, Paula Ehrmann & Gregory Jordan. “InSideOut Coaching.”

84. IDEAS “An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.” — Don Marquis

85. OLD JOKE “An old married couple in their nineties contact a divorce lawyer, who pleads with them to stay together. “Why get divorced now after seventy years of marriage? Why not last it out? Why now?” The little old lady finally pipes up in a creaky voice: “We wanted to wait until the children were dead.”

Excerpt From: John Allen Paulos. “Innumeracy.”

86. SINNERS “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

— Chris Seidman

87. POLITICIANS “Political solutions can never put us on a sound economic footing. Politics is not interested primarily in the good of the nation. Instead, politics has to do with gaining and exercising power over your opponents, rewarding your biggest donors, and benefitting the priority constituencies of your party. If, in doing these things, you also accomplish something that is good for the country at large, that’s great. But such an outcome is more an afterthought in the political process than it is a primary focus.”

Excerpt From: Hovind, Chad. “Godonomics.”

88. PILGRIM CAPITALISM “Bradford decided to search the Scriptures and seek insight from God. He found three principles that saved the [pilgrim] village and possibly even the great nation that would follow. The foundational principles were property rights, incentive, and freedom. In the Bible, he discovered a blueprint for a new economic system. If socialism didn’t work in this best-case scenario with devout Christians, why would we think a less-than-ideal paradigm would work? In other words, if a mostly devout Christian community in the past couldn’t make it work, is there any hope Washington, DC will get it right today? God’s economic principles of property rights, incentive, and personal freedom are central to what I refer to as Godonomics.”

Excerpt From: Hovind, Chad. “Godonomics.”

89. WINSTON CHURCHILL CLASSICS

Concerning PM and Socialist Leader Clement Atley: “He is a modest man with much to be modest about. He is a sheep in sheep’s clothing.”

Concerning PM Stanley Baldwin: “Occasionally he stumbles over the truth, but hastily picks himself up as though nothing had happened. ”

Concerning PM Lord Balfour: “If you wanted nothing done, he is the best man for the task. There is absolutely no equal to him.”

Concerning PM N. Chamberlin: “You had a choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you will have war.  He has a lust for peace.”

Concerning T.E Lawrence (of Arabia): “He was not in complete harmony with the normal.”

90. CIVIL WAR “Lincoln had to have the grace to fight the bloodiest war in our history without “demonizing” the enemy with propaganda. If he had done that, he might have been able to galvanize the resolve of the North much faster, facilitating a quicker military victory. However, it would have made the reunion after the war much more difficult. Because he was truly fighting to preserve the Union, Lincoln never made the men and women of the South the enemy, but rather the evil that held them in bondage.”

Excerpt From: Joyner, Rick. “The Final Quest.”