Winston Churchill — The Failing Student Called in the Darkest Hour

Winston Churchill's boyhood grades reportedly shamed his distinguished family; he passed into military academy only on his third attempt. His political life brimmed with failure — driven from office after a disastrous naval campaign, and through the 1930s exiled from center stage, regarded as finished.

That man was called back in 1940, as Nazi Germany swept Europe and Britain entered its darkest hour: prime minister at sixty-five, able to promise only "blood, toil, tears and sweat" — yet that honesty and unbowed language held a crumbling nation's heart together. Famous among his words to schoolboys: "Never give in. Never, never, never."

What I take from Churchill is the use of unfavored years: exiled in the thirties, he wrote, studied, and kept sounding warnings; the world forgot him, but he never stopped sharpening himself — so when history needed him, he was ready. Obscurity is not an exit. It is the dressing room before your entrance.

What do you work for?