Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: 10 quotes on his birthday

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859 in Scotland. Doyle started his writing career while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He opened up his own medical practice in Portsmouth, but because business was slow, he wrote short stories while waiting for patients. On Nov. 20, 1886, he published a story called "A Study in Scarlet" and introduced the world to detective Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. The character of Holmes was said to be based on Dr. Joseph Bell, a forensic scientist at Edinburgh University for whom Doyle had once clerked. Doyle went on to publish 56 short stories and four novels featuring Holmes. Today Holmes remains one of the most famous fictitious characters in the world. 

1. Introduction

“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.”

– from "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle"

1 of 10

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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