Inspiring.

There’s nothing more beautiful than a well-written chest-thumping pep speech such as the infamous “I have a dream” by Martin Luther King Jr. and “We shall fight on the beaches” by Churchill. I’ve only recently come across this one even though I’ve seen it in in parts but never in its complete form. Yes, I’m probably a spaz for not having seen this one before.


Anyway, an excerpt from Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic”:

"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."


Apparently, it has appeared before in another guise as follows:

"Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger."


Basically the 1900s version of “Fuck off, haters!”