Columbus' Critics

In the book Principle-Centered Leadership, Stephen Covey tells how Columbus was once invited to a banquet where he was given the most honored place at the table. A shallow courtier who was jealous of him asked abruptly, “Had you not discovered the Indies, are there not other men in Spain who would have been capable of the enterprise?

Columbus made no reply but took an egg and invited the company to make it stand on end. They all attempted to do it, but none succeeded, whereupon the explorer tapped it on the table, denting one end, and left it standing.

“We all could have done it that way!” the courtier cried.

“Yes, if you had only known how,” answered Columbus. “And once I showed you the way to the New World, nothing was easier than to follow it.” –John C. Maxwell and Jim Dornan, Becoming a Person of Influence, (Thomas Nelson, Inc. Nashville, 1997), 152-153.