More likely they wrote a lot of mediocre stuff to get to the place where they do a great job of articulating a key point magnificently.
Comparing Wikiquote and Goodreads is illustrative. Often with Wikiquote, one has to wade through long passages, and there are few writers I am willing to do that for (eg Jon Rappoport, Chris Hedges, John Taylor Gatto, because they are such great writers). The readers who contribute to Goodreads, in contrast, tend to find short passages like the Carnegie quote, without including the monotonous material before and after the "wow" line.
P.S. I still happily read essays on Substack, but I'm not looking for short quotes to send out in doing that.
More likely they wrote a lot of mediocre stuff to get to the place where they do a great job of articulating a key point magnificently.
Comparing Wikiquote and Goodreads is illustrative. Often with Wikiquote, one has to wade through long passages, and there are few writers I am willing to do that for (eg Jon Rappoport, Chris Hedges, John Taylor Gatto, because they are such great writers). The readers who contribute to Goodreads, in contrast, tend to find short passages like the Carnegie quote, without including the monotonous material before and after the "wow" line.