There’s a few that are immediate, because he just drilled them into my head. One is “Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.” Try as hard as you want to market something, get a crowd. That’s what actually matters. Another one that he still says all the time is, “You’ve got a violin, I’ve got a barn. Let’s put on a show. Don’t overthink this, just go.

My father said to me, “You need a piece of paper to go into a door sometimes.” I didn’t understand about résumés, but when you write a résumé you have to put down things that people want to know about.

My mother used to say to me a thing which, when I look back on it, wasn’t terribly logical. — and I had a pretty hearty appetite, but when I had had a large meal put in front of me, and even I couldn’t get through it, she would say, “Edmund, remember the starving millions in Asia.” Now what possible use my consuming it would do for the starving millions in Asia, I don’t really know, but the fact remains that I was brought up to think about the starving millions in Asia. That meant I had to clean my plate up and not waste it. Later on, I got more involved with the starving millions in Asia, perhaps in a slightly more practical way: helping some of them with schooling and hospitaling and even in agriculture.

My parents also said, “Don’t follow money. Follow your heart and you’ll be successful.” That’s all they told me and my sisters.

I think three things. One is the great advances in auto safety. I mean, there are tens of thousands of people being saved every year because cars are safer, and millions of people over a decade, injuries prevented. I think that’s a good example of the need to make technology more humane. We may benefit from a lot of technologies, but they exact a cost. Emphysema, cancer, soil contamination, contaminated water, death and injury on the highway. We’ve got to put more effort on making them more humane.

We used to converse at dinner time around the table. Parents and children. We talked about all kinds of issues. From local, neighborhood issues to world issues. It was back and forth, very lively, and very critical. During our early years my mother would relate historical sagas to us for five or ten minutes every lunch hour, when we would come home from school, and it would be continued the next day. I think that built into us a sense that freedom involves responsibility. It isn’t just waving flags and saying, “Look how free we are,” while people’s rights are being trampled sometimes overtly, sometimes beyond their control.

Too many people who go to the best schools, and get great grades, are confronted with a choice of trivial work that is very high paid, and has some sort of surface status, like senior partner in a law firm, or corporate executive, but most of the work can be done by anybody.