The Paradoxical Commandments were written by Kent M. Keith when
he was 19, a sophomore at Harvard College. He wrote them as part
of a book for student leaders entitled The Silent Revolution:
Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council, published by Harvard
Student Agencies in 1968. The Paradoxical Commandments
subsequently spread all over the world, and have been used by
millions of people. Mother Teresa put the Paradoxical
Commandments up on the wall of her children's home in Calcutta.
The fact that the commandments were on her wall was reported in
a book compiled by Lucinda Vardey, Mother Teresa: A Simple Path,
which was published in 1995. As a result, some people have
attributed the Paradoxical Commandments to Mother Teresa. As
Kent explains in his book, Do It Anyway: The Handbook for
Finding Personal Meaning and Deep Happiness in a Crazy World: "I
found out about it in September 1997 at my Rotary Club meeting.
We usually begin each meeting with a prayer or a thought for the
day, and a fellow Rotarian of min