2011年9月12日星期一

charlatan, guru, a hint of embarrassment

The White House social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, Mrs. Kennedy tells Mr. Schlesinger, loved to pick up the phone and say things like “Send all the White House china on the plane to Costa Rica” or tell them they had to fly string beans in to a state dinner. She quotes Mr. Kennedy saying of Lyndon B. Johnson, his vice president, “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?” And Mr. Kennedy on Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Charlatan is an unfair word,” but “he did an awful lot for effect.”

Drucker liked to say that people used the word guru because the word charlatan was so hard to spell. A century after his birth Drucker remains one of the few management thinkers to whom the word “guru” can be applied without a hint of embarrassment.

He also said people only called him a guru because they weren't sure how to spell "charlatan".

荷蘭文Management goeroe Peter Drucker zei het ooit eens tegen mij toen ik nog in San Francisco woonde : je moet nooit een voorspelling doen. ...

He cited Peter Drucker, one of the 20th century's finest business thinkers: "Often we use the word guru because the word charlatan is too long. .

gu・ru

━━ n. 【ヒンドゥー教】教師, 導師; 指導者.

A guru (Sanskrit: गुरु, Hindi: गुरु, Bengali: গুরু) is a person who is regarded as having great knowledge, wisdom and authority in a certain area, and who uses these abilities to guide others. It also means "teacher" or "guide" in the religious sense, and is commonly used in Sikhism, Buddhism and Hinduism as well as in some new religious movements.

charlatan
noun [C] DISAPPROVING
a person who pretends to have skills or knowledge that they do not have, especially in medicine