Quote of the Day: Arnold H. Glasow on Success

We live inside a scroll: deadlines arrive by notification, friendships are maintained in fragments, and AI can draft an email before we’ve finished the thought. In a culture that worships speed and optionality, it’s easy to mistake convenience for advancement. But the older, sturdier truth is captured in Arnold H. Glasow’s line: “Progress is what happens when impossibility yields to necessity.”

Glasow’s point isn’t that humans suddenly become braver on good days. It’s that we become practical when we have to. “Impossible” often means “no one has paid the price to make it possible yet.” The moment a problem becomes urgent, too costly to ignore, too painful to tolerate, our standards change. We stop debating whether something can be done and start asking what must be done.

This is why progress so often looks less like inspiration and more like triage. Breakthroughs rarely arrive as a whimsical victory lap; they arrive as a response to constraint: scarce time, scarce money, scarce safety, scarce dignity. The shock of necessity reorganizes priorities and frees a fierce kind of creativity, one that doesn’t merely dream, but builds. In personal life, the same dynamic applies. When a habit, job, or relationship becomes unsustainable, “impossible” quietly becomes negotiable. That shift is the birthplace of resilience and the proving ground for leadership.

Arnold H. Glasow earned his reputation as a sharp-witted satirist and businessman by watching how people behave when theory collides with reality. His best lines feel like boardroom wisdom with a comedian’s timing: clear, unsentimental, and usable.

March 8 is International Women’s Day, a reminder that history’s “impossibilities” often persist simply because power calls them permanent. If you want to honor the day, and the quote, pick one stuck point and rename it as a necessity: a boundary to set, a skill to learn, a risk to take. Progress begins the moment you decide that standing still costs more.