* After Fred Astair's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM said:  " Can't act! Slightly bald! Can dance a little!"  Astair kept that memo over the fireplace in his Beverly Hills home.

* An expert said of Vince Lombardi: "He possesses little football knowledge. Lacks motivation.

* Socrates was called , "an immoral corrupter of youth".

* Beethoven handled the violin awkwardly and preferred playing his own compositions instead of improving his techniques. His teacher called him hopeless as a composer.

* Louisa May Alcott, the author of  Little Women, was encouraged to find work as a servant or seamstress by her family.

* When Peter J. McDaniel was in the fourth grade, his teacher, Mrs. Phillips, constantly said, "Peter J. McDaniel, you're no good, you're a bad apple and you're  never going to amount to anything."  Peter was totally illiterate until he was 26. A friend stayed up all night with him and read him a copy of  Think and Grow Rich.  Now he owns the street corners he used to fight on and just published his latest book: Mrs. Phillips, You Were Wrong!

* The parents of the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso wanted him to be an engineer.  His teacher said he had no voice at all and could not sing.

* Charles Darwin, father of the Theory of Evolution, gave up a medical career. In his autobiography Darwin wrote,  I  was considered by all of my masters and by my father , a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect."

* Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of ideas.  Walt Disney also went bankrupt several times before he built Disneyland.

* Thomas Edison's teachers said he was too stupid to learn anything.

* Albert Einstein did not speak until he was four years old and didn't read until he was seven. His teacher described him as "mentally slow, unsociable and adrift forever in his foolish dreams."  He was expelled and refused admittance to the Zurich Polytechnic School.

* Louis Pasteur was only a mediocre pupil in undergraduate studies and ranked 15th out of 22 in chemistry.

* Isaac Newton did very poorly in grade school.

* The sculptor Rodin's father said,  "I have an idiot for a son."  Described as the worst pupil in the school, Rodin failed three times to secure admittance to the school of  art. His uncle called him uneducable.

* Leo Tolstoy, author of  War and Peace, flunked out of college. He was describes as "  both unable and unwilling to learn."

* Playwright Tennessee Williams  was enraged when his play was not chosen in a class competition at Washington University where he was enrolled in English XVI.

* F. W. Woolworth's employers at the dry goods store said he had not enough sense to wait upon customers.

* Henry Ford failed and went broke five times before he finally succeeded.

* Babe Ruth, considered by sports historians to be the greatest athlete of all time and famous for setting the home run record, also holds the record for strikeouts.

* Winston Churchill failed sixth grade.  He did not become Prime Minister of England until he was 62, and then only after a lifetime of defeats and setbacks.  His greatest contributions came when he as a  "senior citizen."

* Eighteen publishers turned down Richard Bach's 10,000-word story about a "soaring" seagull,  Jonathan Livingston Seagull, before Macmillan finally published it in 1970.  By 1975 it had sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. alone.

* Richard Hooker worked for seven years on his humorous war novel, M*A*S*H,  only to have it rejected by 21 publishers until Morrow decided to publish it.  It became a runaway bestseller, spawning a blockbusting movie and a highly successful television series.
 

Chicken Soup for the Soul
Written and compiled
by Jack Canfield and Mark V. Hansen
 

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