Founders
Episode 226 #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle
Founders

Episode 226: #226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

Founders

Episode 226

#226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.

What I learned from reading Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle by Paul Johnson.

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[0:55] I have always had a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth, even if it puts them in a minority of one.

[1:20] 4 traits of heroes:

1. Absolute independence of mind. Think everything through yourself.

2. Act resolutely and consistently.

3. Ignore the media.

4. Act with personal courage at all times regardless of the consequences to yourself.

[2:25] Churchill by Paul Johnson

[2:47] Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky by Paul Johnson and Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney by Paul Johnson.

[3:34] Founders #196 Book link: The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitzby Erik Larson. “It’s slothful not to compress your thoughts.” —Churchill

[4:58] They carved out vast empires for themselves and hammered their names into the history of the earth.

[5:04] Each was brave, highly intelligent, and almost horrifically self-assured.

[6:09] Founders #208 In the Company of Giants: Candid Conversations With the Visionaries of the Digital World  "People are packaged deals. You take the good with the confused. In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same thing." —Steve Jobs

[10:22] Alexander the Great read Homer all of his life and knew the passages by heart. It was to him, a Bible, a guide to heroic morality, a book of etiquette and a true adventure story. The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer.

[11:50] Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds by David Goggins

[12:15] The most important factor, as always with men of action, was sheer will.

[15:56] Caesar appreciated the importance of speed and the terrifying surprises speed made possible.

[16:15] Founders #155 Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos “You can drive great people by making the speed of decision making really slow. Why would great people stay in an organization where they can't get things done? They look around after a while, and they're, like, "Look, I love the mission, but I can't get my job done because our speed of decision making is too slow."

[18:33] Caesar was a man of colossal energy and farsighted cunning. He aimed to conquer posterity as well as the world.

[19:42]  You should avoid an unfamiliar word as a ship avoids a reef. —Julius Caesar

[20:55] You train an animal, you teach a person. —Sol Price

[23:02] Caesar’s approach to difficulty was all problems are solvable.

[24:36] Caesar was a man of exceptional ability over a huge range of activities. Among his qualities: great mental power, energy, steadfastness, a gift for understanding everything under the sun, vitality, and fiery quickness of mind. Few men have had such a combination of boldness shrewdness and wisdom.

[26:30] George Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

[27:14] Founders #191 The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

[27:25] George Washington was a vigorous and active man, an early riser about his business all day. And by no means intellectually idle, he accumulated a library of 800 books.

[29:57] The best talk on YouTube: Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love 

[35:08] His (Washington) strategy was clear, intelligent, absolutely consistent, and maintained with an iron will from start to finish.

[36:12] All that counts is survival. The rest is just words.

[37:18] A lesson from the history of entrepreneurship: Why you start your company matters. Doesn’t have to be complex. A great example: Phil Knight said he started Nike because he believed if everyone got out and ran a few miles every day the world would be a better place.

[42:06] Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin

[45:23] Words and the ability to weave them into webs which cling to the memory are extremely important in forwarding action.

[53:01] Founders #200 Against the Odds: An Autobiography by James Dyson: This is part of my anti-brilliance campaign. Very few people can be brilliant. Those who are, rarely do anything worthwhile. You are just as likely to solve a problem by being unconventional and determined as by being brilliant. And if you can't of be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

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#226 Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle

Introduction

“America prepared the way for the cult of the entrepreneur. In due course, the public applauded the outstanding steelmaker, Andrew Carnegie, and the oil man, John D. Rockefeller. This new kind of hero was controversial. And it is a fact that, throughout history, one person's hero has been another's villain, not only in his own day but later. The heroes of America's emergence as the world's largest industrial power were clearly genuine in one sense since Carnegie's cheap, high-quality steel benefited everybody.


Rockefeller's slashing of the price of kerosene by 90% was a godsend. And Ford's cheap, reliable Model T ended the isolation of the farmer, but to others, such men were robber barons or, in the words of President Theodore Roosevelt, malefactors of great wealth. People must agree to differ about heroes. I have always had a soft spot for those who speak out against the conventional wisdom and who are not afraid to speak the truth even if it puts them in a minority of one. I think we appreciate heroes the most if we have a tiny speck of it ourselves, which might be fanned into a flame if the wind of opportunity arose. So how do we recognize the heroes and heroines of today?


I would distinguish 4 principal marks: first, by absolute independence of mind, which springs from the ability to think everything through for yourself and to treat whatever is the current consensus on any issue with skepticism; second, having made up your mind independently to act resolutely and consistently; third, to ignore or reject everything the media throws at you provided you remain convinced you were doing right; finally, to act with personal courage at all times regardless of the consequences to yourself. All history teaches that there is no substitute for courage. It is the noblest and best of all qualities and the one indispensable element in heroism in all its different manifestations.”

That is an excerpt from the epilogue of the book I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Heroes: From Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to Churchill and de Gaulle and is written by Paul Johnson. I wanted to harp on here real quick and do a bonus episode for you because this is the same author. I just -- the last episode was on Winston Churchill. I loved -- this is the first -- Churchill's book was the first book of Paul Johnson's that I've ever read.

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