Words To Live By: “…There Is No Effort Without Error Or Shortcoming…”

In a time when too many consider imperfections and failure as “not an option” it is important to remind ourselves that “There Is No Effort Without Error Or Shortcoming…”

“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 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 up short
again and again, because
there is no effort without error or shortcoming,
but who knows the great enthusiasms,
the great devotions,
who spends himself for 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 he fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be
with those cold and timid souls
who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

~~ Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic” aka “Man in the Arena”  Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

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Theodore (T. R.) Roosevelt, Jr.
(October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919)

The 26th President of the United States (1901–1909)
Husband, Father, widower
Cowboy, rancher, naturalist, explorer, hunter, conservationist
Writer,  philosopher, historian, legislator
Police Commissioner, Secretary of the Navy,
Colonel of the Rough Riders, Governor of New York
Vice President of the United States
Awarded Nobel Peace Prize – 1906

More great Theodore Roosevelt quotes  at Words to Stir a Nation (And a President?)

 Roosevelt’s remarkable life, writings and speeches, look here and here.

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