Whether You Think You Can or Can't
Henry Ford famously said "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right". This has become somewhat of a motivational cliché, and is often waved as an encouragement to believe in yourself no matter what.
This is how I used to understand it, anyways.
Rereading Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker reminded me of it. It got me thinking that Ford's quote has more to do with the intuitive knowledge we develop of ourselves, of our strengths and weaknesses.
Drucker urges us to learn about them through feedback analysis. But we also need to act upon this knowledge by picking the work that calls upon our strengths and actively avoiding the rest.
Whatever Ford actually meant by that, I’ve come to think this is a more useful interpretation for it.