Frederick W. Smith

He was a little guy who was a great football player at Georgia Tech, and he just was indefatigable. He just would never, ever say die. He absolutely proved to me that persistence was a very big part of making it in life. I never forgot that lesson.

I was a student at Yale and wrote a paper about the computerized society that was on the horizon. ... Then I sort of let that lie. I didn’t get a particularly good grade on it, as I recall.

The most important piece of advice that I could give them is to take advantage of the tremendous reservoir of knowledge that’s out there today. Spend some time learning how the world has evolved. There are a lot of good lessons in history, and other peoples’ experiences in the past, that could be exactly the solution to the problem you’re looking for.

When I first met Sergeant Jackson I had grown a mustache and had taken up the affectation of smoking cigars, because I thought this made me look, you know, quite dashing and much older than my 22 years, or what have you. And the first thing that Sergeant Jackson did after I asked him to, in essence, take the insignia off, you know, just tell me straight up what I could do to improve my performance. And he told me, he said, “Well, the first thing, shave off that ridiculous mustache, and quite smoking the cigars — because you look absurd — and be yourself.” And I don’t think I ever forgot that. I don’t think I ever tried an affectation after that point in my life.