Biography of Norman Vincent Peale

Biography

Born - May 31, 1898 United States / Died - December 24, 1993

Norman Vincent Peale is best known for his accomplishments in the field of positive thinking. He wrote the best-selling book The Power of Positive Thinking and openly lectured about the ability to change the quality of life just by changing thoughts.

Born on May 31, 1898 to a Methodist family in Bowersville, Ohio, Norman Vincent Peale spent his childhood delivering newspapers, working in a local grocery store, and selling pots and pans to help support his family. When he finished grade school, Peale attended Ohio Wesleyan University and Boston University. In 1922 Peale became ordained as a minister with the Methodist Church and served as pastor in churches in Rhode Island, Brooklyn, and Syracuse until 1932 when he changed his religious affiliation to the Reformed Church in America. As a result, Peale became pastor of the Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan.

In 1935 Norman Vincent Peale began working on a radio program called "The Art of Living". It lasted for 54 years.

In 1937 Peale, along with the Freudian psychiatrist Dr. Smiley Blanton, began a religious-psychiatric outpatient clinic affiliated with the church. Many of the practices were based on Peale's own philosophies and practices of positive thinking. Over the years the clinic grew and attracted an additional 20 doctors and trained ministers to help teach and treat patients. In 1951 the clinic became known as the American Foundation for Religion and Psychiatry and later merged with the Academy of Religion and Mental Health to become the Institutes of Religion and Health.

In 1945 Norman Vincent Peale launched his publishing career with development of the magazine Guideposts, a non-denominational, inspirational publication. Seven years later in 1952, Peale published his best-selling work The Power of Positive Thinking based on his teachings at the clinic and his core beliefs that positive thinking can change lives. It remained on the bestseller list for 182 consecutive weeks and has since sold 7 million copies. He also wrote The Art of Living, A Guide to Confident Living, The Tough-Minded Optimist, and Inspiring Messages for Daily Living. He also established Guideposts Publications, the Positive Thinking Foundation, and the Peale Center.

On March 26, 1984, President Ronald Reagan awarded Norman Vincent Peale with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contributions to the field of theology. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest honor awarded to civilians in the United States.

Norman Vincent Peale's teachings were based on a set of "techniques" in which individuals repeated positive affirmations in order to bypass negative programming. He believed that, by reaching past the conscious mind, people could begin to reprogram their brains and begin living more positive, successful lives. Many of his affirmations are similar to prayers used for thousands of years by religions from all over the globe.

Peale's teachings came under scrutiny starting with the election of JFK when the minister warned Americans against voting for a catholic president. As a result of the backlash, Peale shied away from later political dealings. Critics, however, continued to analyze Peale's teachings and scholars, theologians and health experts began labeling him as a fraud.

Norman Vincent Peale suffered a stroke and died on December 24, 1993 at the age of 95. He is survived by his wife, Ruth Stafford Peale.

Quotations

The really happy people are those who have broken the chains of procrastination, those who find satisfaction in doing the job at hand. They're full of eagerness, zest, productivity. You can be, too.
Norman Vincent Peale - Procrastination - Happiness

Nothing of great value in this life comes easily. The things of highest value sometimes come hard. The gold that has the greatest value lies deepest in the earth, as do the diamonds.
Norman Vincent Peale - Life - Motivational - Work

Biography of Leo Tolstoy

Born: August 28, 1828
Tula Province, Russia
Died: November 9, 1910
Astapovo, Russia
Russian novelist

The Russian novelist and moral philosopher (person who studies good and bad in relation to human life) Leo Tolstoy ranks as one of the world's great writers, and his War and Peace has been called the greatest novel ever written.
Early years

Leo (Lev Nikolayevich) Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, his family's estate, on August 28, 1828, in Russia's Tula Province, the youngest of four sons. His mother died when he was two years old, whereupon his father's distant cousin Tatyana Ergolsky took charge of the children. In 1837 Tolstoy's father died, and an aunt, Alexandra Osten-Saken, became legal guardian of the children. Her religious dedication was an important early influence on Tolstoy. When she died in 1840, the children were sent to Kazan, Russia, to another sister of their father, Pelageya Yushkov.

Tolstoy was educated at home by German and French tutors. He was not a particularly exceptional student but he was good at games. In 1843 he entered Kazan University. Planning on a diplomatic career, he entered the faculty of Oriental languages. Finding these studies too demanding, he switched two years later to studying law. Tolstoy left the university in 1847 without taking his degree.

Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana, determined to become a model farmer and a "father" to his serfs (unpaid farmhands). His charity failed because of his foolishness in dealing with the peasants (poor, working class) and because he spent too much time socializing in Tula and Moscow. During this time he first began making amazingly honest diary entries, a practice he maintained until his death. These entries provided much material for his fiction, and in a very real sense the collection is one long autobiography.
Army life and early literary career

Nikolay, Tolstoy's eldest brother, visited him at in 1848 in Yasnaya Polyana while on leave from military service in the Caucasus. Leo greatly loved his brother, and when he asked him to join him in the south, Tolstoy agreed. After a long journey, he reached the mountains of the Caucasus, where he sought to join the army as a Junker, or gentleman-volunteer. Tolstoy's habits on a lonely outpost consisted of hunting, drinking, sleeping, chasing the women, and occasionally fighting. During the long lulls he first began to write. In 1852 he sent the autobiographical sketch Childhood to the leading journal of the day, the Contemporary. Nikolai Nekrasov, its editor, was ecstatic, and when it was published (under Tolstoy's initials), so was all of Russia. Tolstoy then began writing The Cossacks (finished in 1862), an account of his life in the outpost.

From November 1854 to August 1855 Tolstoy served in the battered fortress at Sevastopol in southern Ukraine. He had requested transfer to this area, a sight of one of the bloodiest battles of the Crimean War (1853–1956; when Russia battled England and France over land). As he directed fire from the Fourth Bastion, the hottest area in the conflict for a long while, Tolstoy managed to write Youth, the second part of his autobiographical trilogy. He also wrote the three Sevastopol Tales at this time, revealing the distinctive Tolstoyan vision of war as a place of unparalleled confusion and heroism, a special space where men, viewed from the author's neutral, godlike point of view, were at their best and worst.

When the city fell, Tolstoy was asked to make a study of the artillery action during the final assault and to report with it to the authorities in St. Petersburg, Russia. His reception in the capital was a triumphant success. Because of his name, he was welcomed into the most brilliant society. Because of his stories, he was treated as a celebrity by the cream of literary society.
Golden years

In September 1862, Tolstoy married Sofya Andreyevna Bers (or Behrs), a woman sixteen years younger than himself. Daughter of a prominent Moscow doctor, Bers was beautiful, intelligent, and, as the years would show, strong-willed. The first decade of their marriage brought Tolstoy the greatest happiness; never before or after was his creative life so rich or his personal life so full. In June 1863 his wife had the first of their thirteen children.

The first portion of War and Peace was published in 1865 (in the Russian Messenger) as "The Year 1805." In 1868 three more chapters appeared, and in 1869 he completed the novel. His new novel created a fantastic out-pouring of popular and critical reaction.

Tolstoy's War and Peace represents a high point in the history of world literature, but it was also the peak of Tolstoy's personal life. His characters represent almost everyone he had ever met, including all of his relations on both sides of his family. Balls and battles, birth and death, all were described in amazing detail. In this book the European realistic novel, with its attention to social structures, exact description, and psychological rendering, found its most complete expression.

From 1873 to 1877 Tolstoy worked on the second of his masterworks, Anna Karenina, which also created a sensation upon its publication. The concluding section of the novel was written during another of Russia's seemingly endless wars with Turkey. The novel was based partly on events that had occurred on a neighboring estate, where a nobleman's rejected mistress had thrown herself under a train. It again contained great chunks of disguised biography, especially in the scenes describing the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin. Tolstoy's family continued to grow, and his royalties (money earned from sales) were making him an extremely rich man.
Spiritual crisis

The ethical quest that had begun when Tolstoy was a child and that had tormented him throughout his younger years now drove him to abandon all else in order to seek an ultimate meaning in life. At first he turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, visiting the Optina-Pustyn monastery in 1877. But he found no answer.

In 1883 Tolstoy met V. G. Chertkov, a wealthy guard officer who soon became the moving force behind an attempt to start a movement in Tolstoy's name. In the next few years a new publication was founded (the Mediator) in order to spread Tolstoy's word in tract (pamphlets) and fiction, as well as to make good reading available to the poor. In six years almost twenty million copies were distributed. Tolstoy had long been watched by the secret police, and in 1884 copies of What I Believe were seized from the printer.

During this time Tolstoy's relations with his family were becoming increasingly strained. The more of a saint he became in the eyes of the world, the more of a devil he seemed to his wife. He wanted to give his wealth away, but she would not hear of it. An unhappy compromise was reached in 1884, when Tolstoy assigned to his wife the copyright to all his works before 1881.

Tolstoy's final years were filled with worldwide acclaim and great unhappiness, as he was caught in the strife between his beliefs, his followers, and his family. The Holy Synod (the church leaders) excommunicated (kicked him out) him in 1901. Unable to endure the quarrels at home he set out on his last pilgrimage (religious journey) in October 1910, accompanied by his youngest daughter, Alexandra, and his doctor. The trip proved too much, and he died in the home of the stationmaster of the small depot at Astapovo, Russia, on November 9, 1910. He was buried at Yasnaya Polyana.

Quotations

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall return to the general and eternal source.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

Biography of Napoleon Hill

Napoleon Hill
(1883-1970)
Founder of The Science Of Success

American born Napoleon Hill is considered to have influenced more people into success than any other person in history. He has been perhaps the most influential man in the area of personal success technique development, primarily through his classic book Think and Grow Rich which has helped million of the people and has been important in the life of many successful people such as W. Clement Stone and Og Mandino.

Napoleon Hill was born into poverty in 1883 in a one-room cabin on the Pound River in Wise County, Virginia. At the age of 10 his mother died, and two years later his father remarried. He became a very rebellious boy, but grew up to be an incredible man. He began his writing career at age 13 as a "mountain reporter" for small town newspapers and went on to become America's most beloved motivational author. Fighting against all class of great disadvantages and pressures, he dedicated more than 25 years of his life to define the reasons by which so many people fail to achieve true financial success and happiness in their life.

During this time he achieved great success as an attorney and journalist. His early career as a reporter helped finance his way through law school. He was given an assignment to write a series of success stories of famous men, and his big break came when he was asked to interview steel-magnate Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Carnegie commissioned Hill to interview over 500 millionaires to find a success formula that could be used by the average person. These included Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Henry Ford, Elmer Gates, Charles M. Schwab, Theodore Roosevelt, William Wrigley Jr, John Wanamaker, WIlliam Jennings Bryan, George Eastman, Woodrow Wilson, William H. Taft, John D. Rockefeller, F. W. Woolworth, Jennings Randolph, among others.

He became an advisor to Andrew Carnegie, and with Carnegie's help he formulated a philosophy of success, drawing on the thoughts and experience of a multitude of rags-to-riches tycoons. It took Hill over 20 years to produce his book, a classic in the Personal Development field called Think and Grow Rich. This book has sold over 7 million copies and has helped thousands achieve success. The secret to success is very simple but you'll have to read the book to find out what it is!

Napoleon Hill passed away in November 1970 after a long and successful career writing, teaching, and lecturing about the principles of success. His work stands as a monument to individual achievement and is the cornerstone of modern motivation. His book, Think and Grow Rich, is the all time best-seller in the field.

In recent years The Napoleon Hill Foundation has published his bestselling writings worldwide, giving him immense influence around the globe.


Quotations

There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

Biography of Dale Carnegie

Perhaps the most well-known author in the field of communication and public speaking, Dale Carnegie was born into poverty on a small farm in Maryville Missouri. Devoted to public speaking from his teen years, he was active in debate in high school. Carnegie attended Warrensburg (Mo.) State Teachers College, and became a salesman for Armour and Company in Nebraska. Moving to New York City in persuit of an acting career, he gave classes in public speaking at the Young Men's Christian Association. Soon he was developing courses on his own, and writing pamphlets that he would eventually publish as books. Carnegie believed that the quickest way to develop self-esteem is through public speaking.

In the early 1930s he was known for his books and a radio program. When he published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1930, it enjoyed immediate success and would become one of the best-sellers of all time, selling more than 10 million copies in many languages. This led to demand for him as a lecturer and writer: he began a syndicated newspaper column and organized the Dale Carnegie Institute for Effective Speaking and Human Relations, with branches all over the world. He lived to see the day when his name became virtually synonymous with the very kind of self-help-to-success that he promoted.

Dale Carnegie loved to teach others how to become successful. His rock-solid, time-tested advice has helped many now-famous people to climb the ladder of success. How to Win Friends and Influence People remains one of the best-sellers of all time, because of its colorful illustrative stories and simple, well-phrased rules. Two of Dale Carnegie's most famous maxims are, "Believe that you will succeed, and you will," and "Learn to love, respect and enjoy other people." Dale Carnegie died in 1955 at the age of 67.


Quotations

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Don't be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

Sun Wu Tzu Biography

Sun Tzu, Chinese general, circa 500 B.C. A collection of essays on The art of war is attributed to Sun Tzu. There are a growing number of translations of this Chinese classic, usually titled The Art of War.

Knowledge of Sun Tzu reached Europe shortly before the French Revolution in the form of a summary translation by Father J. J. M. Amiot, a French Jesuit priest. In the various translations, Sun Tzu is sometimes referred to as Sun Wu, and Sun Tzi. The most fundamental of Sun Tzu's principles for the conduct of war is that "All warfare is based on deception". Another key Sun Tzu principle is that "The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting." Sun Tzu's ideas spread to the rest of Asia and to Japan.

The works of Sun Tzu have been widely known in the United States since the mid-1970s. Diplomat Henry Kissinger has made reference to Sun Tzu and the principles for the conduct of warfare has been the subject of serious study in U.S. military circles for many years. The Art of War as applied to business, sports, diplomacy and personal lives has been popularized in American business and management texts. Sun Tzu may be the most frequently quoted Chinese personality in the world today.

Quotations

It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperilled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperilled in every single battle.

The general who wins the battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses makes but few calculations beforehand.

Five Characteristics of a good general:

1) Wisdom

2) Sincerity

3) Benevolence

4) Courage

5) Strictness

Five Characteristics that could afflict a general:

1) If reckless, he can be kill

2) If cowardly, he can be captured;

3) If quick-tempered, he can be easily provoked;

4) If sensitive to honor, he can be easily insulted; and

5) If over-compassionate to the people; he can easily be harassed

Lao Tzu Biography

The main source of information on Lao Tzu's life is a biography written by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien (145–86 B.C.E.) in his Records of the Historian. By this time a number of traditions or beliefs about the founder of Chinese Taoism were going around, and Ssu-ma Ch'ien himself was unsure of their authenticity. The biography in fact contains an account of not one but three men called Lao Tzu.

The first Lao Tzu was a man named Li Erh or Li Tan, who came from the village of Ch'üjen in the southern Chinese state of Ch'u. Li Erh served as historian in charge of the official records in the Chinese imperial capital of Loyang. He was a peer of the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius (551–479 B.C.E.), and he is reported to have given an interview to Confucius when he came to Loyang seeking information on the Chou ritual.

Another man identified as the founder of Taoism was Lao Lai Tzu, who also came from Ch'u. He is said to be a person of the same age as Confucius and is credited with a fifteen-chapter book explaining the teachings of the Taoist school. Nothing more is known about the second Lao Tzu.

According to a third account, the original Lao Tzu lived 129 years after the death of Confucius. This man went by the name of Tan, the historian of Chou. Actually, it is impossible to prove the historical accuracy of any of these accounts. Lao Tzu is not really a person's name and is only a complimentary name meaning "old man." It was common in this period to refer to respected philosophers and teachers with words meaning "old" or "mature." It is possible that a man who assumed the pseudonym (assumed name) Lao Tzu was a historical person, but the term Lao Tzu also was used as a substitute title to the supreme Taoist classic, Tao te ching (Classic of the Way and the Power).

According to Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Lao Tzu had been serving in the Chou capital for a long time. He became unhappy with the dishonest political situation and decided to go into retirement. As he was passing through the Hanku Pass west of Loyang, the gate-keeper stopped him and asked him to write down a book of his teachings. Lao Tzu then composed a book of five thousand sayings in two sections that described the theory of the tao and te. This book was then known as the Tao te ching.

Lao Tzu is frequently associated with the other famous early Chinese thinker, Confucius. There are numerous stories about debates that supposedly took place between these two great philosophers in which Lao Tzu was always the winner. These stories are undoubtedly anti-Confucian publicity circulated by members of the Taoist school, perhaps as early as the fourth century B.C.E.

Tao te ching

Lao Tzu's Tao te ching itself is a collection of sayings describing the principal Taoist teachings. Most scholars now agree that Lao Tzu did not write this book, mainly because no one knows whether he was a historical person. The most convincing theory is that there were a large number of proverbs (wise sayings) that were part of the Taoist teaching. They were memorized and passed on from teacher to pupil. Eventually the best of these sayings were collected and edited into the book, which was then given the title Tao te ching. A study of the style and grammar of the work reveals that it must have been put together around the fourth century B.C.E.

Lao Tzu's Tao te ching has confused its readers for centuries. Its language is extremely short and unclear. Much of the text is rhymed. Although the work is divided into chapters, the passages in a chapter do not always refer to the same subject. Thus, it hardly qualifies as a well-organized book of philosophical teachings.

The most important concept developed in Lao Tzu's Tao te ching is tao. Tao literally means "road" or "way." In the Tao te ching it is portrayed as something that cannot be expressed, a concept beyond definition. "The way (tao) that can be told of is not the constant way." Tao is so indescribable that the term itself is often not used and is referred to only indirectly. Tao stands as the force behind the universe. There is even an indication that it is the universe itself.

An important quality of the tao is its "weakness," or "submissiveness." Because the tao itself is basically weak and submissive, it is best for man to put himself in harmony with the tao. Thus, the Tao te ching places strong emphasis on nonaction (wu wei), which means the absence of aggressive action. Man should not strive for wealth or fame, and violence is to be avoided. This peaceful approach to life was extremely influential in later periods and led to the development of a particular Taoist way of living that involved special breathing exercises and special eating habits that were designed to maintain calmness and harmony with the tao.

Quotations

Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.