Challenge yourself to attempt what is difficult and risky. Prioritize virtue and merit over empty accolades. Never give in to brute force or moral evil. These are some of the wise pieces of advice from two great men who shared a birthday on this day.
Mark Twain and Winston Churchill lived on different continents and pursued very different careers, but they were both born on Nov. 30 — though nearly four decades apart. The American Twain (born Samuel Clemens in 1835) was a great author and journalist whose novel Huck Finn is rightly considered one of the greatest classics of U.S. literature. The British Churchill was a war hero in multiple conflicts and as prime minister led his nation to victory in WWII.
As different as they were in so many ways, both Twain and Churchill were alike in being brilliant men, original thinkers, and larger-than-life personalities. They rejected popular evils — Twain exposed the ugliness of slavery and Churchill saw the Nazi threat years before others did, for instance — and they achieved excellence.
So what better way to honor their birthday anniversary than by benefiting from their advice?
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Twain, for example, advised, “Make it a point to do something every day that you don't want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.” In our day, “duty” is a word that is not in many Americans’ vocabulary. Young people are raised to be entitled, not to think of responsibility and duty. That’s why our country is in crisis, torn apart by people with grievances instead of built up by people with a strong sense of duty.
Pain and difficulty are a part of every human life. The key is how one handles these situations. And most importantly, instead of waiting around for the perfect situation, we must dive right in and get to work. Or, as Twain more eloquently put it, “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
Which leads to another point: that doing one’s duty and even exceeding it, that being honorable and virtuous, is more important than being recognized. Of course we all want to be praised when we attain an accomplishment, but the greatest men are those who do what is right for its own sake rather than those who merely want trophies and titles regardless.
In an era of participation awards and DEI, it is time we rediscover Twain’s truism: “On the whole it is better to deserve honors & not have them, than to have them & not deserve them.”
Like Twain, Churchill had a sort of bulldog tenacity and perseverance undeterred by any tyrant or catastrophe. Perhaps no politician in history has failed and come back to greater achievements more times than he did. From his youthful and daring escape during the Boer War to his service in the trenches of WWI to his “never surrender” leadership in WWII, Churchill lived out the advice he gave to Harrow schoolboys:
This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.
If we want to achieve greatness, we should learn from the wisdom of the heroes who went before us.
