During a recent search in our fellowship database, I came across the profile of our founder, Michael Young, the Lord of Dartington. In his profile we have included a quote from one of his speeches given at SSE around the turn of the millennium, which I think is worth sharing. In a dire financial environment like today, this might be food for thought.  

Michael Young:

There is a great 'wall' coming up in a few weeks time
and only a few messages will get over the wall, or a few whispers through the
chinks. So, looked at in this way, my function here is to whisper a few things
to you, from one century to another. You are going to spend a longer time in
the next century than I am, but I think no-one here has spent as much time in
this century as I have.

So, I had to decide, overnight, what I was going to say to you, as an old
man of the twentieth century, to you people of the twenty first century. And I
think what I would say is 'Go for it.'

It is perhaps a metaphor of a ship leaving the dock. It's the ship of the
next century and there I am on the dockside, waving a message, shouting out 'Go
for it! Don't be put off! Be persistent, persistent, persistent!'

Anyway, that is my message to you of the next century, from me in this
century. And I don't think the next century will be any different. The
resistance to new ideas will be much the same – and the means to overcoming it
will be the same. You will need all the guile you can muster and all the
persistence. Don't dismiss all your good ideas if they don't seem good ideas to
your friends and other people. Believe in yourself. Go for it. That's what I'm
shouting from the dockside.

Thor Steinhovden currently interns with the School for Social
Entrepreneurs in Bethnal Green, London. He recently finished a BA in
Political Science and History at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. This
fall he will embark on a MSc in Comparative Politics (Nationalism and
Ethnicity) at the London School of Economics.