Excerpt from The Man in the Arena

publish Opened 2024-10-31. From Poetry and literature I like.

Theodore Roosevelt delivered “Citizenship in a Republic” in Paris on April 23, 1910. The speech is popularly known as “The Man in the Arena.”

There’s an excerpt from that speech which really resonates with me:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Teddy’s basically saying: It’s better to do something and fail than to never have tried at all; and you should ignore those who criticize you doing something.

The sentiment is similar to Anton Ego’s speech.