LEADERSHIP & VISIONING THE FUTURE: Immortal Vision Statements from Matchless Leaders

[continued from the Last Post.]

“I will build a motor car for the great multitude... It will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one and enjoy with his family the blessings of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces...When I am through, everybody will be able to afford one, and everyone will have one.

The horse will have disappeared from our highways, the automobile will be taken for granted [and we will] give a large number of men employement at good wages.”

~ HENRY FORD

“I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day the nation will rise up and live life out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the State of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering in the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today...”

~ MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

“Hitler knows he will have to break us on this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, the whole world, including the United States, including all we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age, made more sinister and perhaps more protracted by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties and so bear ourselves that if the Bristish Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

~ SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL

“The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge. It will be a place for parents and children to spend pleasant times in one another’s company; a place for teachers and pupils to discover great ways of understanding and education.

Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savour the challenge of the future.

Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand.

Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatise these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all theworld.

Disneyland will be something of a fair, an exhibition, a playground, a community center, a museum of living facts, and a showplace of beauty and magic. It will be filled with the accomplishments, the joys and hopes of the world we live in. And it will remind us and show us how to make those wonders part of our lives.”

~ WALT DISNEY

[Excerpted from the 'Lifescaping' seminar participant's manual. The 'Lifescaping' seminar is conducted by Dilip Mukerjea about four times a year under the auspices of the Singapore Institute of Management.]