Success Quote by J. Irwin Miller

The line lands like a quiet rebuke to the swaggering myth of the self-made mind. Miller, a businessman best known for shaping Cummins and, by extension, modern Columbus, Indiana, isn’t preaching passive dependence; he’s arguing that ignorance can hide behind pride. “Found out for myself” sounds rugged and virtuous, but he frames it as a constraint, a self-imposed poverty. The intent is practical: if you’re building companies, cities, or institutions, learning only through personal trial is ruinously expensive. Someone else has already paid for the lesson. Take the receipt.

The subtext is an ethic of stewardship. Knowledge here isn’t just facts; it’s inherited craft, civic taste, and moral calibration. Miller was famously invested in design, education, and public life; he treated expertise as a public good, not a private advantage. That context makes the quote less about humility as a personality trait and more about responsibility as a leader. Leaders who fetishize “my experience” tend to confuse anecdote with insight and independence with competence.

What makes the sentence work is its inversion of business bravado. He uses the language of wealth and scarcity - “poorer person” - to measure what we usually romanticize: solitary discovery. It’s a neat cultural pivot, too, pushing back against an American individualism that often reads advice, history, and mentorship as optional. Miller’s point is that borrowing wisdom isn’t cheating; it’s how a society compounds returns.