Stories of people turning bad into good

Turning bad into good

There is a story about Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, who became wealthy from this invention. When his brother died, the leading newspaper in Stockholm made a mistake. They thought Alfred Nobel had died, and they printed his obituary. He was horrified to read it in the morning paper. It said that he was the  most destructive man in all of Europe. He had caused more people to die than any other man in Europe. Horrified by people’s view of him, Nobel turned his attention to doing good. He created the Nobel Prize for peace, and for medicine and other sciences–the prize for which he is now remembered. He had a chance to influence the world for good rather than harm. 

(told by John and Julie Gottman in Gottman Method Couple Therapy in Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy by Alan Gurman, p 160)