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Community. A Friend Started A Real Estate Brokerage A Few Years Ago. By The Time She'd Added Her Second Employee, She Was A Pillar Of Her 35,000-person Community. No Rule Says That Only The Local Banker Or Car Dealer Can Organize The Program To Raise Supplemental Funds For The Public Library Or Send The High School Band On A Well-earned Special Trip. Participating In Community Affairs, With Time More Than Dollars, Is Good Business From Day One. It Gets Your Name Around, Adds To Your Distinctiveness, And, Best Of All, Makes You An Attractive Employer (which Is The Key To Sustained Success).

-Tom Peters

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Community. A Friend Started

Tom Peters

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Community. A Friend Started A Real Estate Brokerage A Few Years Ago. By The Time She'd Added Her Second Employee, She Was A Pillar Of Her 35,000-person Community. No Rule Says That Only The Local Banker Or Car Dealer Can Organize The Program To Raise Supplemental Funds For The Public Library Or Send The High School Band On A Well-earned Special Trip. Participating In Community Affairs, With Time More Than Dollars, Is Good Business From Day One. It Gets Your Name Around, Adds To Your Distinctiveness, And, Best Of All, Makes You An Attractive Employer (which Is The Key To Sustained Success).

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If, As I Anticipate, A Wide Array Of Personal, Portable Information/communication Devices Becomes Increasingly Important And Widespread For Information-intensive Users, It Will Be A Major Challenge For Libraries To Adapt Their Content And Services To Such A Diverse Technological Environment.

Business, Life Itself, Is Damned Hard Work If You Wanna Be Good At It. Actually, That's Precisely Wrong. Business Ceases To Be Work When You're Chasing A Dream That Has Engorged You. ("work Should Be More Fun Than Fun" - Noel Coward.) And If The Passion Isn't There. Then Biotech And Plumbing Will Be Equal Drags.

All White-collar Work Is Project Work. The Single Salient Fact That Touches All Of Our Lives Is That Work Is Being Reinvented.

Who Comes First? Don't Be Silly, Says King Hal; It's Employees. That Is - And This Dear Watson, Is Elementary - If You Genuinely Want To Put Customers First, You Must Put Employees More First.

Skill At Creating, Exploiting, And Exiting Crucial Alliances Beats Ownership Of Fixed Assets

In Mckinsey's World, All Of Life Is One Of Two Things: Strategy Or Organization.

Digital Ink Technology Holds Substantial Promise In Terms Of Legibility, Portability, And Power Consumption, But I Am Less Confident About The Communication Aspect.

We Found That The Most Exciting Environments, That Treated People Very Well, Are Also Tough As Nails. There Is No Bureaucratic Mumbo-jumbo... Excellent Companies Provide Two Things Simultaneously: Tough Environments And Very Supportive Environments.

The Delivery And Presentation Media Are Important, And Each Format Has Its Advantages And Disadvantages, But Ultimately I Just Want To Read What I Want To Read, When And Where I Want.

We're Going To See Leadership Emerge As The Most Important Element Of Business - The Attribute That Is Highest In Demand And Shortest In Supply.

People Of All Demographic Categories And Geographic Regions Will Access A Good Digital Library.

Inspiring Visions Rarely (i'm Tempted To Say Never) Include Numbers.

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They Say Plan It. I Say Do It.

Celebrate What You Want To See More Of.

The Most Important And Visible Outcropping Of The Action Bias In Excellent Companies Is Their Willingness To Try Things Out, To Experiment. If You Wait Until You Believe You Are Safe, Sure To Be Without Occasional Foolish Feelings, You've Most Likely Waited Too Long.

Hire Disrespectful People.

'in Search Of Excellence' - Even The Title - Is A Reminder That Business Isn't Dry, Dreary, Boring, Or By The Numbers. Life At Work Can Be Cool - And Work That's Cool Isn't Confined To Tiger Woods, Yo-yo Ma, Or Tom Hanks. It's Available To All Of Us And Any Of Us.

Reward Excellent Failures. Punish Mediocre Successes.

The Little People Will Get Even, Which Is One Of A Thousand Reasons Why They Are Not Little People At All. If You're A Jerk As A Leader, You Will Be Torpedoed. And Usually It Won't Be By Your Vice Presidents; It Will Be On The Loading Dock At 3am When No Supervisors Are Around.

Forget All The Conventional 'rules' But One. There Is One Golden Rule: Stick To Topics You Deeply Care About And Don't Keep Your Passion Buttoned Inside Your Vest. An Audience's Biggest Turn-on Is The Speaker's Obvious Enthusiasm. If You Are Lukewarm About The Issue, Forget It!

You Can't Live Life Without An Eraser.

A Vibrant, Rich, Growing Corpus Of Public-domain Books Is A Vital Public Good - Similar To Parks, The Infrastructure Of Basic Services, And Other Hallmarks Of Any Advanced Society.

A Passive Approach To Professional Growth Will Leave You By The Wayside.

Authors And Publishers Want Fair Compensation And A Means Of Protecting Content Through Digital Rights Management. Vendors And Technology Companies Want New Markets For E-book Reading Devices And Other Hardware. End-users Most Of All Want A Wide Range And Generous Amount Of High-quality Content For Free Or At Reasonable Costs. Like End-users, Libraries Want Quality, Quantity, Economy, And Variety As Well As Flexible Business Models.

The Day Firing Becomes Easy Is The Day To Fire Yourself.

In The Great City Of San Francisco, Where I Used To Live, At 2 In The Morning Every Other Victorian House Has Somebody Who Is Writing The Great American Novel. And The City Is Not Loaded With James Joyces Or Virginia Woolfs. But Entrepreneurship Is About Distorted Views Of Reality.

The Manager, In Today's World, Doesn't Get Paid To Be A Steward Of Resources, A Favored Term Not So Many Years Ago. He Or She Gets Paid For One And Only One Thing: To Make Things Better (incrementally And Dramatically), To Change Things, To Act - Today.

How Do You Humiliate And Demean Someone And Then Expect Him Or Her To Care About Product Quality.

The Market May Never Coalesce Around One Basic Design, Or Even Around Two Or Three Dominant Devices.

Leaders' Careers Will Usually Be Determined By Their Handling Of One Or Two Critical Events That No One Could Possibly Anticipate Or Plan For.

Mastery Is Great, But Even That Is Not Enough. You Have To Be Able To Change Course Without A Bead Of Sweat, Or Remorse.

If Future Competitiveness Depends On Treating People As An Important Part Of The Institution, The Least Respectful Thing I Can Imagine Doing To A Human Being Is Asking Him To Urinate In A Cup.

I Am Confident That For The Foreseeable Future (barring Some Catastrophic Event Affecting Economic, Energy, Electrical, And Communications Systems), Many Subpopulations That Use Information Intensively (e.g., Students, Academics, Library Patrons, White Collar Workers) Will Be Using Some Sort Of Portal Information Appliance.

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A Career Is A Portfolio Of Projects That Teach You New Skills, Gain You New Expertise, Develop New Capabilities, Grow Your Colleague Set, And Constantly Reinvent You As A Brand.

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Cult Of Personality

Lists Simplify, Clarify, Edify.

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Procrastination

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Dangerous Situations

Bricks And Mortar

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Rewards Should Go To Teams As A Whole.

Swipe From The Best, Then Adapt.

Innovation And Business

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We Cannot Innovate Without Opening The Door To Havoc.

A Completely Free Library Is As Rare As A Truly Free Lunch.

Confidence Means Non-paralysis, A Willingness To Act, And Act Decisively, To Start New Things And Cut Failing Ventures Off.

You Can Only Improve What You Measure.

The Race Will Go To The Curious, The Slightly Mad, And Those With An Un-satiated Passion For Learning And Dare-deviltry.

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Hire Attitude Train Skills.

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One Percent Improvement In 1,000 Things Is Better Than 1,000% Improvement In One Thing.

Remember: You Are The Only Human Being In The World Who Can Help This Particular Customer At This Particular Moment In Time.

As Project Chief You Are Creating A Narrative, A Story, A Good Yarn. If You Look At The Process-journey That Way, You And Your Gang Will ... Dramatically Up The Odds Of A Wow Outcome!

Life Is Too Short For Non-wow Projects.

Life Is Too Short

Portability Of Lots Of Information Should Not Be Underestimated.

If You're A Leader, Your Whole Reason For Living Is To Help Human Beings Develop - To Really Develop People And Make Work A Place That's Energetic And Exciting And A Growth Opportunity, Whether You're Running A Housekeeping Department Or Google. I Mean, This Is Not Rocket Science.

Effective Visions Are Lived In Details, Not Broad Strokes.

Don't Let The Vision Be Shot Through With Holes, But Be Damn Sure Some Of Your Best And Brightest Are Shooting At It -- With Bazookas As Well As Sniper's Rifles.

He Who Makes The Quickest, Coolest Prototypes Reigns!

It May Be Primarily Property Taxes In The Case Of A Public Library, Or State Taxes And Tuition In The Case Of An Academic Library At A Public University, But The Funding Sources Of Most Libraries Continue To Have A Strong Geographic Component.

Because Nearly All Digital Libraries Are Tied To Bricks-and-mortar Institutions, The Funding Base Tends To Be Quite Localized.

Bricks And Mortar

The Whole Secret To Our Success Is Being Able To Con Ourselves Into Believing That We're Going To Change The World Because Statistically We Are Unlikely To Do It.

An Era Similar To The One In Which The Black Rotary Phone Dominated Its Product Category May Not Recur Anytime Soon.

The Common Wisdom Is That ... Managers Have To Learn To Motivate People. Nonsense. Employees Bring Their Own Motivation.

To Meet The Demands Of The Fast-changing Competitive Scene, We Must Simply Learn To Love Change As Much As We Have Hated It In The Past.

Treat The Customer As An Appreciating Asset.

Had Twitter Been Invented Earlier, My Books Would Have Been Shorter.

Now It Is Much Faster And Cheaper To Bring Thedocument To The User, Rather Than Ask The User To Come To The Document Or Collection.

I Would Not Be Surprised To See Interesting New Forms Of Expression And Literary Genres Develop As The E-book Movement Matures.

What You Decide Not To Do Is Probably More Important That What You Decide To Do.

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Organizations Exist To Serve. Period. Leaders Live To Serve. Period.

The Idea Of Intimately Entwining With Customers [to Get Ideas] Is An Idea Whose Time Has Come.

Many Flagship State Universities Have Wonderful Digital Libraries That Are Accessed By People Around The World. In Future, If Not Current, Budget Crises, Trustees, Board Members, And Administrators May Wonder Why These State Institutions - With An Articulated Primary Clientele Of Students, Faculty, And Staff Members And A Secondary Clientele Of All Citizens Of The State - Should Be Spending Resources On A Digital Library That Is Used By Many People Beyond The Primary And Secondary Service Populations.

How Do You Achieve Excellence?...stop Doing Non-excellent Stuff!

Your Calendar Never Lies. All We Have Is Our Time. The Way We Spend Our Time Is Our Priorities, Is Our Strategy. Your Calendar Knows What You Really Care About. Do You?

Anybody Who Is An Entrepreneur Is A Person Who Essentially Has Impaired Judgment. The Odds Of Success Are Zilch. This Valley Is Loaded To The Gills With A Whole Lot Of Totally Insane People Who Honest To God Believe That They Can Be The Next Bill Gates Or The Next Scott Mcnealy. And That Is Genuinely Stupid.

It's This Simple: You Are A Brand. You Are In Charge Of Your Brand. There Is No Single Path To Success. And There Is No One Right Way To Create The Brand Called You. Except This: Start Today. Or Else.

Vision Is Dandy, But Sustainable Company Excellence Comes From A Huge Stable Of Able Managers.

Effective Listening Is A Professional Achievement-achieved Only Through Hard Work.

Effective Listening

Are You Placing Enough Interesting, Freakish, Long Shot, Weirdo Bets?

If A Window Of Opportunity Appears, Don't Pull Down The Shade.

The Dumbest Mistake Is Viewing Design As Something You Do At The End Of The Process To 'tidy Up' The Mess, As Opposed To Understanding It's A 'day One' Issue And Part Of Everything.

Remember My Mantra: Distinct... Or Extinct.

The Best Leaders Are The Best Notetakers, Best Askers, And Best Learners.

Integrity May Be About Little Things As Much Or More Than Big Ones.

Perception Is All There Is. If The Customer Think He's Right, He's Right.

Quite Simply, No Matter How Hard You Try, No Matter How "open" You Are, You'll End Up Surrounded By "yes People." It's Hard Not To Believe People Who Are Repeating Your Own Ideas. Resist The Temptation.

I Think It's Wonderful To Save The World, But You Need To Be Part Of The World, Too.

Become A "learning Organization". Shuck Your Arrogance - "if It Isn't Our Idea, It Can't Be That Good" - And Become A Determined Copycat/ Adapter/ Enhancer.

If Silly Things Were Not Done, Intelligent Things Would Never Happen.

I Find Digital Content Much Easier And More Rewarding To Interact With On Screen Than Printed On Paper.

It's Relatively Simple. If We're Not Getting More, Better, Faster Than They Are Getting More, Better, Faster, Then We're Getting Less, No Better Or More Worse.

Excellence Is Not An Aspiration. Excellence Is What You Do In The Next Five Minutes.

A Little (or More) Boat Burning Would Do Many Enterprises A World Of Good.

A Good Collection Is More Than Just The Sum Of Its Parts.

I Think Economics Is About Passion. Economic Progress, Whether It Is A Two-person Coffee Shop Or Whether It Is Netscape, Is About People With Brave Ideas. Because It Is Brave To Mortgage The House, When You've Got Two Kids, To Start A Coffee Shop.

My Real Bottom-line Hypothesis Is That Nobody Has A Sweet Clue What They’re Doing. Therefore You Better Be Trying Stuff At An Insanely Rapid Pace. You Want To Be Screwing Around With Nearly Everything. Relentless Experimentation Was Probably Important In The 1970s-now It’s Do Or Die.

Have You Set High Standards In The Past That Make It Clear What Level Of Performance You Demand?

There Is No Such Thing As A Minor Lapse Of Integrity

Business Is About People. It's About Passion. It's About Bold Ideas, Bold Small Ideas Or Bold Large Ideas.

Collections Of Books And Other Documents, Either Printed Or Electronic, Are A Form Of Congregation.

The Dominant Culture In Most Big Companies Demands Punishment For A Mistake, No Matter How Useful, Small, Invisible.

If The Other Guy Is Getting Better, Then You'd Better Be Getting Better Faster Than The Other Guy Is Getting Better... Or You're Getting Worse.

Learning Is A Matter Of Intensity Not Elapsed Time.

The Greatest Difficulty In The World Is Not For People To Accept New Ideas, But To Make Them Forget Old Ideas.

The World Has Not Just "turned Upside Down". It Is Turning In Every Which Way At An Accelerating Pace.

Good Managers Have A Bias For Action.

Forget Loyalty. Or At Least Loyalty To One's Corporation. Try Loyalty To Your Rolodex-your Network-instead.

Nothing Good Or Great Can Be Done In The Absence Of Enthusiasm.

Old: Be No.1 Or No.2 In Your Market. New: Find A Niche, Create Something New.

The Drive For Control, Or The Perception Thereof, Is Truly The Strongest Force In Human Nature.

Nearly 100% Of Innovation-from Business To Politics-is Inspired Not By "market Analysis" But By People Who Are Supremely Pissed Off By The Way Things Are.

When It Comes To E-book Playback Devices And Software, I Have Always Thought That The Emphasis On Ergonomic Concerns As A Tipping Point For The End-user Population Was Misplaced.

We Are No Doubt In The Great Age Of The Brand.

The Chinese Are Quite Entrepreneurial. Remember When Lenovo Bought Ibm's Pc Division. It Was Said That China Didn't Need A Brand Name, China Didn't Need To Buy Lenovo To Get Into The Pc Business, I Remember Reading A One-liner Somewhere Which Struck Me As Quite Possibly True, It Said The One Thing That The Chinese Had Not Been Able To Copy Or Figure Out Was The Way, In Terms Of Systems, That Americans - It Probably Would Be True For Europeans As Well - That Americans Install And Live By Their Management Systems, While China Is Still Quite Half-assed. Perhaps That Is A True Statement.

Test Fast, Fail Fast, Adjust Fast.

The Best Leaders... Almost Without Exception And At Every Level, Are Master Users Of Stories And Symbols.

I Endorse A Lot Of People - Sometimes People Say I Endorse Too Many Books. And My Response Has Always Been The Same: If I Can Get One Case Study That Can Give Me One Good Idea That I Can Implement For $25, Or For These Days One-third Of That On Kindle, I've Gotten A Very Good Deal.

Ultimately, I Think That The Growth And Sustainability Of The E-book Movement Depends On Authors And End-users (readers).

Customers Perceive Service In Their Own Unique, Idiosyncratic, Emotional, Irrational, End-of-the-day, And Totally Human Terms. Perception Is All There Is!

Take Someone New And Weird To Lunch Today

Send 10-ten!!-people Flowers. Today. As "thank Yous" For Good Things "small"-or Even Large-done In The Last Two Weeks.

We All Know Of The Dangers And Inequities Of The Traditional Digital Divide: People Who Have Good Access Tocomputer Networks Have A Distinct Advantage - In Terms Of Both Life Opportunities And Quality Of Life, I Wouldargue - Over The Vast Majority Of The World's Population That Does Not Yet Have Good Access To Computernetworks. The "other" Digital Divide Points To An Increasingly Unstable Situation That Has Developed Inlibrarianship As Digital Libraries Have Evolved And Matured.

Design Is So Critical It Should Be On The Agenda Of Every Meeting In Every Single Department.

Trust, Not Technology, Is The Issue Of The Decade.

If You're Not Confused, You're Not Paying Attention.

Smile If It Kills You. The Physiology Of Smiling Diffuses A Lot Of Anger And Angst. It Makes Your Body And Soul Feel Better.

The 10 Or 12 Artists I Have Known Really Well All My Life Are At Least As Competitive As Professional Athletes. They May Express It In Slightly Different Terms, But You Look At The Jackson Pollocks Et Al., And They Are As Interested In Wall Space In The Galleries As Joe Montana Is In The Percentage Of Completed Passes. So The Notion That Symphonic Conducting, Or Stage Play, Or Pure Art, Is Not A Competitive Business Is Real Bullshit.

But There's No Substitute For Getting Smarter Faster. And The Way You Get Smarter Is To Screw Around Vigorously. Try Stuff. See What Works. See What Fails Miserably. Learn. Rinse. Repeat.

Oh Lord, There It Is Again. The Question;" What Kind Of Business Should I Start?" Incidentially, It Has A Twin That Also Sets Me Off: "what Should I Specialize In During The Second Year Of My Mba Studies?" Sorry, But Those Are Two Of The Most Profoundly Upsetting Questions Anyone Can Ask - Upsetting Because The Answer Should Be Obvious: Do What Turns You On, Not What The Statistics Say Is Best.

I Think Economics, Content, And The Ability To Interact With Content In New And Different Ways Are What Will Drive The Adoption Of E-books.

Advantage Comes Not From The Spectacular Or The Technical. Advantage Comes From A Persistent Seeking Of The Mundane Edge.

Fact Is, The Work Place To A Great Extent Is "where We Live." We Need Star Accountants. Boffo Saleswomen. Over-the-top Creatives In Marketing And New Product Development. And So On. But, Since We're Effectively Talking About "where We Live," Good Sense And Good Business And "good" Engagement Throughout The "supply Chain," From Vendor's Vendor To Customer's Customer, We Would Benefit Mightily-including On The P & L-if We Insisted (!) On: "pleasant." "caring." "engaged."

Work On Your Story! He/she Who Has The Best Story Wins! In Life! In Business! The White House!

Steve Jobs Is Perhaps The Most Competitive Human Being I Have Ever Met In My Life, And Yet I Would Argue One Of The Most Artistic Human Beings I Have Ever Met In My Life. You Can Trash The Movies All You Want, But They Do Have An Artistic Component. And Yet Brutal Competition Knows No Peers When It Comes To Hollywood.

Have You Thanked A Front-line Employee For Carrying Around A Great Attitude ... Today?

I'm About As Far From Being A Flag-waver - You Won't Find Any American Flag Pins In My Drawer - As Someone Can Be.

It Boils Down To Studenthood-in-perpetuity / Curiosity-in-perpetuity / Applied Fanatic Restlessness. That Is, A Belief That Life Is One Big Learning Experience. Something Mysterious Happens To A Curious, Fully Engaged Mind - And It Happens As Often As Not, Subconsciously. Strange Little Sparks Are Set Off, Connections Made, Insights Triggered. The Results: An Exponentially Increased Ability To Tune Up / Reinvent / Wow-ize Today's Project At Work.

Power Lies In The Details, And The Tenacious Pursuit Of Such Hidden Levers Can Pay Off Enormously. While You Don't Want To Get A Reputation As A Prissy Worrywart, Worrying About The Details In Private Is Important. You May Think You Are The World's Greatest Speaker, But If The Auditorium's Sound System Is Singing Static - Well, Forget It.

Are Your Customers Saying Wow?

It Doesn't Matter What Product Or Service You're Offering; There Is Unlimited Ability To Improve The Quality Of Anything.

I Imagine A School System That Recognizes Learning Is Natural, That A Love Of Learning Is Normal, And That Real Learning Is Passionate Learning. A School Curriculum That Values Questions Above Answers...creativity Above Fact Regurgitation...individuality Above Conformity.. And Excellence Above Standardized Performance..... And We Must Reject All Notions Of 'reform' That Serve Up More Of The Same: More Testing, More 'standards', More Uniformity, More Conformity, More Bureaucracy.

Change Is Not So Much About Being The First One To Embrace A New Idea, But Being The First To Forget An Old One

Listen To Everyone. Ideas Come From Everywhere

Knowing When To Take Your Losses Is An Essential Part Of Eventual Success.

What Gets Measured Gets Done.

Inspirational Customer Service

Lavish Credit On Anyone And Everyone Who Helped You The Least Bit.

It's Not Enough To Be Close To The Customer. You've Got To Be Glued To The Customer.

We Are All Michaelangelos.

To Sell Is Above All To Master The Art And Science Of Listening.

Leaders Don't Create Followers, They Create More Leaders.

Authority Never Matches Responsibility. That's One Of The Great Myths And Delusions Of All Times. Winning Managers And Individual Performers At All Levels Know That Effectiveness Means Building Your Own Network And Creating Your Own Authority. Those Who Succeed Always Reach Far Beyond Formal Deputation, Take Initiatives, And Take The Heat When Things Go Awry. That's True In The Military In Times Of War, True For 200 Person Manufacturing Firms, And True At Giant Automakers Or Software Companies.

Progress Is Mostly The Product Of Rogues.

The New Idea Either Finds A Champion Or It Dies. No Ordinary Involvement With A New Idea Provides The Energy Required To Cope With The Indifference And Resistance That Change Provokes.

All Business Success Rests On Something Labeled A Sale, Which At Least Momentarily Weds Company And Customer.

Congratulations

Think About The Market, Think About The Design, And Think About Who Is Going To Design For That Market. Hit The Mark.

Digital Content And Electronic Networks Have Changed The Basic Environmental Conditionsin Which Documents Are Created, Distributed, And Used.

The Magic Formula That Successful Businesses Have Discovered Is To Treat Customers Like Guests And Employees Like People.

I Believe In The Age Of The Internet, Facebook And Twitter, That Relationships Are Everything.

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Brand Inside Is More Important Than Brand Outside For Sustained Success.

I Don't Want An Epitaph On My Gravestone That Says, 'he Would Have Pursued Some Big Dreams In His Life, But Other People Wouldn't Let Him.

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