8-20-07
by Bonnie Goodman
"The promise of America is that nobody is born to lose, but who has never wondered, 'Am I wasting my life?' We imagine escaping the mad scramble yet kick ourselves for lacking drive. Low ambition offends Americans even more than low achievement…. Failure conjures such vivid pictures of lost souls that it is hard to imagine a time, before the Civil War, when the word meant "breaking in business" - going broke. How did it become a name for a deficient self, an identity in the red? Why do we manage identity the way we run our businesses - by investment, risk, profit, and loss? -- Scott A. Sandage in "Born Losers: A History of Failure in America"