I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.

Hear the paradoxical words of Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who declared: “I have had all of the disadvantages required for success.” At first, these words strike as strange, for how can disadvantages—those burdens we seek to avoid—be required for the path to success? Yet within this contradiction lies an ancient truth: that hardship, struggle, and lack are often the very fires that forge greatness.

When Ellison speaks of disadvantages, he recalls his own life. Born to a poor, single mother, raised in a modest neighborhood, he was marked not by privilege but by scarcity. Yet these very conditions taught him resilience, sharpened his hunger, and gave him the audacity to challenge the world. What others would call misfortune, he recognized as the raw material of strength. It is the storms that toughen the oak; it is the furnace that hardens the steel. Without such trials, greatness rarely endures.

This wisdom is confirmed by history. Consider the life of Abraham Lincoln, born in poverty, self-taught by candlelight, ridiculed for his rough appearance and plain speech. These were his disadvantages, yet they gave him empathy for the common man, resilience in the face of defeat, and endurance through the crucible of civil war. From his humble soil rose one of the greatest leaders of men. Thus, Ellison’s words are no boast, but a reminder that misfortune can be the secret seed of triumph.

The saying also reveals a truth about the human heart. Comfort breeds complacency; abundance softens the edge of hunger. But disadvantage awakens resourcefulness, perseverance, and daring. Those deprived of an easy road learn to carve their own path. Those denied support learn to build strength within themselves. In this way, disadvantage becomes not a curse, but a stern teacher that prepares its students for victories unimagined by the privileged.

Even the ancients told this tale. Rome was not born in silk but in struggle, its founders hardened by conflict with neighboring tribes, its greatness forged in adversity. Likewise, the Spartans, raised in harsh discipline, became warriors feared by all. Adversity gave them their might, just as it gave Ellison the will to defy odds and rise from obscurity to command one of the greatest companies of his age.

O children of tomorrow, let this lesson be yours: do not curse your hardships. Do not despise your struggles. For these may be the very requirements of your success. Each obstacle is a teacher, each wound a forge, each disadvantage a hidden gift. The world crowns not those who never stumbled, but those who learned to rise stronger with every fall.

Let your practice be this: when life places a burden on your shoulders, do not cry out, “Why me?” Instead, ask, “What strength shall this give me? What wisdom shall I gain?” Take your disadvantages and turn them into rungs upon the ladder of triumph. In time, you will see, as Ellison did, that what seemed like chains were in fact the very wings that lifted you.

So remember always his paradox: the disadvantages required for success are the very things you once thought would destroy you. Endure them, use them, be shaped by them, and you too shall find that the road of hardship leads to the heights of greatness.