The Greatest Waste Is Human Potential

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]One of the things that really bothers me is that we don't make the best of the talent that we have in the world. And when I was thinking about, you know, this, you know, there was a poem we learned in school and a line of it that has always stayed with me right through my life. And it's two lines from a elegy in a country churchyard and it is Full many a flower is born to blush unseen and waste its fragrance in the desert air. And what that means is there are so many talented people that never get a chance to show their talents. Take the way that we look at childhood.

[00:00:32]Starting with children. Neither their gender, nor their sex, nor their talent, nor their class, etc. We should all have the opportunity in order to maximize the wealth and prosperity of a nation for every child to be allowed to grow up free of expectations and roles.

[00:00:53]And then there would come a stage in their lives when they might say, "Well, I want to be a poet."