How Should We Treat Each Other?

“In the unreal world of fiction and the motion pictures, one sees polite villains with unbelievably efficient gangs and lone heroes who are outright boors*. Life really isn’t like that: real villains are usually pretty crude people and their henchmen cruder; Napoleon and Hitler were betrayed right and left by their own people. Real heroes are the quietest-talking fellows you ever met and they are very polite to their friends.

“When one is lucky enough to get to meet and talk to the men and women who are at the top of their professions, one is struck by an observation often made that they are just about the nicest people you ever met. That is one of the reasons they are at the top: they try, most of them, to treat others well. And those around them respond and tend to treat them well and even forgive their few shortcomings.”

*Rough, bad-mannered person

Excerpted from The Way to Happiness, A Common Sense Guide to Better Living by L. Ron Hubbard