What Gets people into the history books?
I thought about this a bit. There are people famous for cruelty like Vlad the Impaler and for kindness like Mother Teresa. There are people famous for creating like Leonardo da Vinci and those famous for destruction like Hitler. There are people famous for humor, for adventure, for brilliance… well, for most anything you can think of. So, why is Robin Williams a world-famous comedian while your buddy Joe Schmoe, who always cracks you up, is not. The answer is ambition.
Ambition alone won’t do the trick. It must be coupled with excellence in some other trait or capability. Ambition is just an amplifier. Hitler was known for his mesmerizing oratory skills, but, without a giant helping of ambition, his hate would have festered on a street corner and in the corners of his mind. Einstein’s brilliant intellect gave us the theory of relativity, Avogadro’s Number, and his photoelectric law, but without ambition they would have died with him. Even great singers like Pavarotti, Julie Andrews, Elvis Presley, and Whitney Houston would have delighted only themselves and their friends and families without an extra helping of ambition,
Exceptional ambition without exceptional skill will likely still get you noticed, but not remembered, at least not for long. Exceptional skill drives exceptional success and that is what we record in history, Of course we also record collosal failures which occur when great ambition exists in a vacuum.
These are just my thoughts, but they make sense to me.