The Man in the Arena

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 in 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 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.
--Theodore Roosevelt by his address delivered,
The Man in the Arena: Citizenship in a Republic,
at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

[天下遠見讀書俱樂部轉譯]
「功勞不是歸給批評的人，不是歸給指出強人過錯、指導別人哪裡還可以做得更好的人，而是歸給投入其中，臉上沾滿塵土、汗水和血的人，歸給勇敢奮鬥、…懂得甚麼叫偉大熱情和偉大奉獻、為了高尚目標奉獻自己、成功時懂得甚麼叫豐功偉績、失敗時至少知道甚麼叫敢作敢為的人。這些人是那些…既不知甚麼叫勝利，也不懂甚麼叫失敗的冷漠、膽小之徒永遠比不上的。」
--老羅斯福(Theodore Roosevelt)
出自Theodore Roosevelt,"Citizenship in a Republic",speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910.