When I was in grade 8, I took a mandatory "shop" class -- woodworking, metalworking, and electronics. One day in class the teacher observed that Leonardo da Vinci, while he had lots of ideas, rarely built anything, and as a result of this he never discovered that his plans were flawed.
This one remark transformed me from being someone who was content to work entirely with theory to being someone who went out and built systems -- because however confident I was with my theory, I wanted the confirmation offered by seeing it work.
This doesn't have much to do with entrepreneurialism, but it's certainly something which changed my life. :-)
Manual labor and craftsmanship were not really popular with higher society in that day and age. I've mentioned this before here, but it's a fun anecdote: Galileo taught at the University of Padova, and to honor him, his students built him a lectern themselves, rather than pay to have it built, which they could have easily afforded. Instead of some find work of art from the time period, you can tell from a mile away that it's really bad work - sloppily put together and rough looking. You can tell they had no idea what they were doing.
This one remark transformed me from being someone who was content to work entirely with theory to being someone who went out and built systems -- because however confident I was with my theory, I wanted the confirmation offered by seeing it work.
This doesn't have much to do with entrepreneurialism, but it's certainly something which changed my life. :-)