Pushing to the Front
Published in 1896, Pushing to the Front is the grandfather of the modern self-help genre, a bracing antidote to the sanitized motivational literature that followed. Orison Swett Marden wrote for an era that valued plain speaking and hard-won wisdom, and his message remains electrifying: the barrier between ordinary lives and extraordinary achievement is nothing more than hesitation. He argues that self-confidence is not arrogance but necessity, that ambition is a moral duty, and that the person who dares to claim their own greatness will find the world unwilling to disagree. Drawing on figures from Caesar to Napoleon, Kepler to Dante, Marden demonstrates that history's great achievers shared one quality above all others: the audacious belief that they were destined for something more. This is not a book about positive thinking in the fluffy sense. It is about the fierce, almost stubborn refusal to accept limitations. It is for anyone who has ever felt the spark of ambition and wondered if they had the right to fan it into a flame.
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“Wanted, a man who will not lose his individuality in a crowd, a man who has the courage of his convictions, who is not afraid to say "No," though all the world say "Yes.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“You will find the whole world will change to you when you change your attitude toward it.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“Every discovery in science and art, is due to the trained power of seeing things ... Keep your eyes open, your ears open ... Trace difficulties.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“No man can be ideally successful until he has found his place. Like a locomotive, he is strong on the track, but weak anywhere else.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“The educated man ought to be able to do something better, something higher than merely to put money in his purse. Money-making can not compare with man-making.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“Open eyes will discover opportunities everywhere; open ears will never fail to detect the cries of those who are perishing for assistance; open hearts will never want for worthy objects upon which to bestow their gifts; open hands will never lack for noble work to do.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“I never knew a man to be successful who was always talking about business being bad. The habit of looking down, talking down, is fatal to advancement.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“Quit fearing things that may never happen, just as you would quit any bad practise which has caused you suffering. Fill your mind with courage, hope, and confidence.””
— Orison Swett Marden
“You, young man, make up your mind at the very outset of your career that whatever comes to you in life, that whether you succeed or fail, whether you have this or that, there is one thing you will have, and that is a happy, contented mind, that you will extract your happiness as you go along.””
— Orison Swett Marden
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Marden, Orison Swett. Pushing to the Front. Lex, lex-books.com/book/pushing-to-the-front-3a749820-3dc5-400c-8196-8135fe29faf7.Marden, O. S. (n.d.). Pushing to the Front. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/pushing-to-the-front-3a749820-3dc5-400c-8196-8135fe29faf7Marden, Orison Swett. Pushing to the Front. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/pushing-to-the-front-3a749820-3dc5-400c-8196-8135fe29faf7.
