July 31 If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name. Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President, 1901-1909 The Conditions of Success, An Address at the Cambridge Union, May 26, 1910 I have spoken only of the great successes; but what I have said applies just as much to the success that is within the reach of almost every one of us. I think that any man who has had what is regarded in the world as great success must realize the the element of chance has played a great part in it. Of course a man has to take advantage of his opportunities; but the opportunities have to come. There are two kinds of success. One is the very rare kind that comes to the man who has the power to do what no one else has the power to do. That is genius. The average man who is successful,_the average statesman, the average public servant, the average soldier, who wins what we call great success_is not a genius. He is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities that he shares with his fellows, but who has developed those ordinary qualities to a more than ordinary degree.