David Calhoun

“Wanting to reform the world without discovering one’s true self is like trying to cover the world with leather to avoid the pain of walking on stones and thorns. It is much simpler to wear shoes.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“When you align individually high-performing people around the idea that they are collectively underdogs, you tap into the cohesive gel that brings early adopters together. We created an enemy for us to rebel against (this belief that our approach was “impossible”), which is one of the fastest ways to unite people around a common goal. And with each new person who joined our volunteer army, we received both the validation and the skills necessary to prove that we could carve a different path from those who came before us.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change

“People who try to blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance or government scandal are often punished, without recourse to the courts. Kei Sugaoka, an American of Japanese descent, was quickly dismissed from his job as a safety inspector for General Electric after he disclosed a cover-up of safety violations at a nuclear reactor in Fukushima. Sugaoka said he watched his supervisors carefully erase videotapes showing cracks in a critical component of the reactor, yet when he “blew the whistle” and told regulators, his name was improperly disclosed to the utility and his employer.”
― Michael Zielenziger, Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation

“The paperwork would make me CEO and grant me a salary, equity, and benefits. Between the money and the health insurance, I could cover all of my immediate needs. But I’d have to change everything I stood for.”
― Adam Braun, The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change