Must Repeat

Quote

By Theodore Roosevelt

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, and 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 know neither victory nor defeat.

Source
Citizenship in a Republic (address at the Sorbonne, Paris), April 23, 1910 · African and European Addresses, 1910, pp. 38-39
Read at
Internet Archive (Smithsonian Libraries scan of African and European Addresses, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910)

Share this quote

Post on XFacebookEmail

About this quote

From "Citizenship in a Republic," the address Roosevelt gave at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910, as printed in African and European Addresses (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1910). The 1910 printing ends "who know neither victory nor defeat"; the version usually quoted today reads "who neither know victory nor defeat." The passage runs across two printed pages.

More from Theodore Roosevelt