Our people page on Earl Nightingale

More from and about
Earl Nightingale
(biographical info at bottom of page)

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don't wait for
something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think
how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it's at work
or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.

Reading dispels prejudices which hem our minds within narrow spaces. One of the things that will surprise you as you read good books from all over the world and from all times of man is that human nature is much the same today as it has been ever since writing began to tell us about it.

People credited with all kinds of ability, talent, brains and know-how, including the ability to see into the future, frequently have nothing more than the courage to keep everlastingly at what they set out to do. They have that one great quality that is worth more than all the rest put together. They simply will not give up! When a person makes up his or her mind to do something, then it's only a matter of time. Staying with time takes bulldog persistence. This seems to be the entrance examination to success--lasting success--of any kind! A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before we changed. People who have goals succeed because they know where they're going. It's that simple.

Each of us must live off the fruit of his or her thoughts in the future, because what you think today and tomorrow, next month and next year, you will mold your life and determine your future. You are guided by your mind.

The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!

Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something
stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we
might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.

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Our environment, the world in which we live and work,
is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.

Courage changes things for the better. With courage, you can
stay with something long enough to succeed at it, realizing that
it usually takes two, three or four times as long to
succeed as you thought or hoped.

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged
in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for
ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep.
It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.

As a Depression-era child, Earl Nightingale was hungry for knowledge. From the time he was a young boy, he would frequent the Long Beach Public Library in California, searching for the answer to the question, "How can a person, starting from scratch, who has no particular advantage in the world, reach the goals that he feels are important to him, and by so doing, make a major contribution to others?" His desire to find an answer, coupled with his natural curiosity about the world and its workings spurred him to become one of the world's foremost experts on success and what makes people successful.

Earl Nightingale's early career began when, as a member of the Marine Corps, he volunteered to work at a local radio station as an announcer. The Marines also gave him a chance to travel, although he only got as far as Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Earl managed to be one of the few survivors aboard the battleship Arizona. After five more years in the service, Earl and his wife moved first to Phoenix then Chicago to build what was to be a very fruitful career in network radio.

As the host of his own daily commentary program on WGN, Earl Nightingale arranged a deal that also gave him a commission on his own advertising sales. By 1957, he was so successful, he decided to retire at the age of 35. In the meantime, Earl had bought his own insurance company and had spent many hours motivating its sales force to greater accomplishments. When he decided to go on vacation for an extended period of time, his sales manager begged him to put his inspirational words on record. The result later became the recording entitled The Strangest Secret, the first spoken word message to win a Gold Record by selling over a million copies.

In The Strangest Secret, Earl had found an answer to the question that had inspired him as a youth and, in turn, found a way to leave a lasting legacy for others. About this time, Earl met a successful businessman by the name of Lloyd Conant and together they began an "electronic publishing" company which eventually grew to become a multi-million dollar giant in the self-improvement field. They also developed a syndicated, 5-minute daily radio program, "Our Changing World," which became the longest-running, most widely syndicated show in radio.

When Earl Nightingale died on March 28, 1989, Paul Harvey broke the news to the country on his radio program with the words, "The sonorous voice of the nightingale was stilled." In the words of his good friend and
commercial announcer, Steve King, "Earl Nightingale never let a day go by that he didn't learn something new and, in turn, pass it on to others. It was his consuming passion."

We have some inspiring and motivational books that may interest you. Our main way of supporting this site is through the sale of books, either physical copies or digital copies for your Amazon Kindle (including the online reader). All of the money that we earn through them comes back to the site in one way or another. Just click on the picture to the left to visit our page of books, both fiction and non-fiction!