《把信送给加西亚》--[美]阿尔伯特·哈伯德

本书堪称是一本成功学圣经。《把信送给加西亚》(A Message to Garcia)

下面是我的书摘：

* 主动就是不用别人告诉你，你就能出色地完成工作

* 他们最大的愚蠢就是不懂人类社会的最基本行为法则--互惠的交换：投入才有回报；忠诚才有信任；主动才有创新。

* 哈伯德强调主动完成任务，切中了企业生存和发展的命脉：通常是员工的职业道德，而不是管理层的水平决定工作效率。

* 天才，就是主动性的爆发

* 如果你是一所大学的学生，那就抓住那些现有的好处。你给与它容忍，你就得到益处。你对它的制度给与同情和忠诚，你就会得到报偿。

* 如果一个地方不好，那么你平时就尽力而为，给别人树立榜样，让它变得好起来。做自己分内之事。

* 你到处可以看到那些失业的人。跟他们聊一聊，你就会发现，他们牢骚满腹，怨天尤人，愤愤不平。那是他们性格上的缺陷给他们造成的麻烦。他们自毁前程，自食其果。他们总

是显得格格不入，无所作为。所有的雇主都在寻找能够助他一臂之力的人，他却在冷眼旁观。对于那些无所作为的人，碍手碍脚的人，让其趁早离开，这是商业上的规矩：基于自然

的法则，奖赏只能属于那些得力的人。

* 后来，我知道自己错了。这些工作潜移默化地给与我珍贵的教诲和机会，不管在什么样的工作中，也不管在哪个档次上，我都学到了不少东西。

* 我的结论就是，每一位雇员在每一项工作中都要倾听和相信这一点：你可以使自己的生活好转起来，就从今天开始，就从你现在的工作做起，而不必等到遥远未来的某一天你找到理想的工作再去行动。

* 但到底怎样的人才是罗文呢？我可以说，现在可能就是一些罗文正在读这篇文章。他们是这样的人，一种异常优秀的人。异常意味着超越平常。他们不仅会做别人要求他们做到，而往往能够超乎人们的期望，不断追求卓越，把事情做的尽善尽美。

* 能够把信送给加西亚的人十分稀少。因为大多数人满足与平庸，对此我难以理解，可以说是无法理解人们为什么会安于平庸。成功是应为你一定要成功；走向成功是应为你选择了不让生活选择你的选择。每个人都要自己选择。你可以选择一种得过且过的生活，当然你也可以选择一种追求完美的生活。

*　对他们的回答是，这与天性无关，你可以改变，事实上，这就是一个有关选择的问题。你可以选择卓越，为此先做一个改变的决定吧！

*　成功是一种心态，专注于目标，清楚地认识它，紧紧地盯着他

*　勤俭与其他许多美好的习惯相伴而生。勤俭意味着勤奋。当然，勤俭还是经济，而经济就是认真地对待事物，并合理地使用他们。

*　咆哮的大海使我认识到：成功的背后是连续不断的，一次接着一次的艰苦航程。

*　一个军人的天职就是：“不要问为什么，而是服从命令，然后去完成它。”

A Message To Garcia
In all this Cuban business there is one man stands out on the horizon of my memory like Mars at perihelion.
When war broke out between Spain and the United States it was very necessary to communicate quickly with the leader of the Insurgents. Garcia was somewhere in the mountain vastness of Cuba-no one knew where. No mail nor telegraph message could reach him. The President must secure his cooperation, and quickly. What to do!
Some one said to the President, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan will find Garcia for you, if anybody can.”
Rowan was sent for and given a letter to be delivered to Garcia. How “the fellow by the name of Rowan” took the letter, sealed it up in an oil-skin pouch, strapped it over his heart, in four days landed by night off the coast of Cuba from an open boat, disappeared into the jungle, and in three weeds came out on the other side of the Island, having traversed a hostile country on foot, and delivered his letter to Garcia-are things I have no special desire now to tell in detail. The point that I wish to make is this: McKinley gave Rowan a letter to be delivered to Garcia; Rowan took the letter and did not ask: “Where is he at?”
By the Eternal! There is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze and the statue placed in every college of the land. It is not book-learning young men need, nor instruction about this and that, but a stiffening of the vertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to a trust, to act promptly, concentrate their energies: do the thing-“Carry a message to Garcia!”
General Garcia is dead now, but there are other Garcias. No man who has endeavored to carry out an enterprise where many hands were needed, but has been well-nigh appalled at times by the imbecility of the average man-the inability or unwillingness to concentrate on a thing and do it.
Slipshod assistance, foolish inattention, dowdy indiffer-ence, and half-hearted work seem the rule; and no man succeeds, unless by hook or crook or threat he forces or bribes other men to assist him; or mayhap, God in His goodness performs a miracle, and sends him an Angel of Light for an assistant.
You, reader, put this matter to a test: You are sitting now in your office-six clerks are within call. Summon any one and make this request:” Please look in the encyclopedia and make a brief memorandum for me concerning the life of Correggio.” Will the clerk quietly say,” Yes, sir,” and go do the task?
On your life, he will not. He will look at you out of a fishy eye and ask one or more of the following questions: Who was he ? Which encyclopedia? Where is the encyclopedia? Was I hired for that? Don’t you mean Bismarck? What’s the matter with Charlie doing it? Is he dead? Is there any hurry? Shan’t I bring you the book and let you look it up yourself? What do you want to know for?
And I will lay you ten to one that after you have answered the questions, and explained how to find the information, and why you want it, the clerk will go off and get one of the other clerks to help him try to find Garcia-and then come back and tell you there is no such man. Of course I may lose my bet, but according to the Law of Average, I will not.
Now, if you are wise, you will not bother to explain to your “assistant” that Correggio is indexed under the C’s, not in the K’s, but you will smile very sweetly and say, “Never mind,” and go look it up yourself. And this incapacity for independent action, this moral stupidity, this infirmity of the will, this unwillingness to cheerfully catch hold and lift-these are the things that put pure Socialism so far into the future.
If men will not act for themselves, what will they do when the benefit of their effort is for all?
A first-mate with knotted club seems necessary; and the dread of getting “the bounce” Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. Advertise for a stenographer, and nine out of ten who apply can neither spell nor punctuate-and do not think it necessary to.
Can such a one write a letter to Garcia?
“You see that bookkeeper,” said the foreman to me in a large factory. “Yes, what about him?” “Well he’s a fine accountant, but if I’d send him up town on an errand, he might accomplish the errand all right, and on the other hand, might stop at four salons on the way, and when he got to Main Street would forget what he had been sent for.” Can such a man be entrusted to carry a message to Garcia?
“We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employ-ment,” “and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.”
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving after “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned.
In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only, if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer-but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has nusted to carry a message to Garcia?
“We have recently been hearing much maudlin sympathy expressed for the downtrodden denizens of the sweat-shop” and the “homeless wanderer searching for honest employ-ment,” “and with it all often go many hard words for the men in power.”
Nothing is said about the employer who grows old before his time in a vain attempt to get frowsy ne’er-do-wells to do intelligent work; and his long, patient striving after “help” that does nothing but loaf when his back is turned.
In every store and factory there is a constant weeding-out process going on. The employer is constantly sending away “help” that have shown their incapacity to further the interests of the business, and others are being taken on. No matter how good times are, this sorting continues: only, if times are hard and work is scarce, the sorting is done finer-but out and forever out the incompetent and unworthy go. It is the survival of the fittest. Self-interest prompts every employer to keep the best-those who can carry a message to Garcia.
I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to any one else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress, him. He cannot give orders; and he will not receive them. Should a message be given him to take to Garcia, his answer would probably be, “Take it yourself!”
Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand of discontent. He is impervious to reason, and the only thing that can impress him is the toe of a thick-soled Number Nine boot.
Of course I know that one so morally deformed is no less to be pitied than a physical cripple; but in our pitying, let us drop a tear, too, for the men who are striving to carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not limited by the whistle, and whose hair is fast turning white through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slipshod imbecility, and the heartless ingratitude which, but for their enterprise, would be both hungry and homeless.
Have I put the matter too strongly? Possibly I have; but when all the world has gone a-slumming I wish to speak a word of sympathy for the man who succeeds-the man who, against great odds, has directed the efforts of others, and having succeeded, finds there’s nothing in it: nothing but bare board and clothes. I have carried a dinner pail and worked for day’s wages, and I have also been an employer of labor, and I know there is something to be said on both sides. There is no excellence, per se, in poverty; rags are no recommendation; and all employers are not rapacious and high-handed, any more than all poor men are virtuous. My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the “boss” is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive, without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets “laid off” nor has to go on a strike for higher wages.
Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals.
Anything such a man asks shall be granted. He is wanted in every city, town and village-in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such: he is needed and needed badly-the man who can “Carry a Message to Garcia”.
So who will send a letter to Garcia?
Elbert Hubbard
1899

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多读一些书，英语很重要。

《把信送给加西亚》--[美]阿尔伯特·哈伯德

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