Slow Starters

Winston Churchill seemed so dull as a youth that his father thought he might be incapable of earning a living in England. Charles Darwin did so poorly in school that his father once told him, "You will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

G.K. Chesterton, the English writer, could not read until he was eight. One of his teachers told him, "If we could open your head we should not find any brain but only a lump of white fat."Thomas Edison's first teacher described him as "addled," and his father almost convinced him he was a "dunce."

Albert Einstein's parents feared their child was dull, and he performed so badly in all high school courses except mathematics that a teacher asked him to drop out.

Source: Book of Lists, 1986, Irving Wallace, Wm. Morrow & Co