I had a teacher in high school that liked to dole out life advice. Even looking back decades later, most of it was actually pretty good. One of them was:
You can be smart -or- hard-working and do fine anywhere. But you will always be bested by those who are smart -and- hard working.
> The two guys I knew, who attended Oxf. and Camb. were both fired because they were more talk then action.
Talk is easy but action is hard. There's a chance they never actually had to "put up or shut up" before in their life. And if that's true, there's going to be a strong aversion to actually taking action because that's when they might actually fail -- potentially for the first time in their life.
You can be smart -or- hard-working and do fine anywhere. But you will always be bested by those who are smart -and- hard working.
> The two guys I knew, who attended Oxf. and Camb. were both fired because they were more talk then action.
Talk is easy but action is hard. There's a chance they never actually had to "put up or shut up" before in their life. And if that's true, there's going to be a strong aversion to actually taking action because that's when they might actually fail -- potentially for the first time in their life.