Time & Perspective Quote by Edwin Louis Cole

Cole’s line reads like a pressure-to-diamond manifesto: crisis isn’t merely something to survive, it’s a lever to pry your life open and reset its direction. The key move is the framing of “successful people” as a distinct species with a trained perception. Success here isn’t luck or even talent; it’s an interpretive habit. Where others see rupture and loss, the “successful” see a moment when the rules are temporarily suspended and the old scale of things can be renegotiated.

The subtext is classic self-help moral arithmetic: crisis reveals character, and character determines outcomes. Notice how the language turns turmoil into a staircase - “lesser to greater, smaller to bigger.” Those comparative pairs imply that your pre-crisis state was, in some sense, insufficient. That’s motivating if you’re primed for growth, but it also quietly judges anyone who emerges from crisis simply intact. The promise is aspirational; the implied rebuke is that staying the same is a kind of failure.

Context matters. Cole built his reputation in the late-20th-century American motivational tradition, steeped in personal responsibility and, often, a faith-adjacent belief in purpose under pressure. In that ecosystem, “crisis” is almost never just economic downturn or illness; it’s a test of spiritual and psychological flexibility. The line works because it flatters the reader into a choice: adopt the “successful” lens and you, too, can convert disruption into expansion. It’s not nuanced, but it’s effective - a clean, portable slogan designed to turn fear into forward motion.