One of my all time favorite quotes is from Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th President. The thing I like most about the quote is that it perfectly descibes salespeople. Read it and I’m sure you’ll agree. I’ve included an 8×10 printed version for you to frame and hang on the wall of your office. Read it whenever you feel over-criticized and underappreciated.
MAN IN THE ARENA by Theodore Roosevelt our 26th President:
“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 sewat 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 or defeat.”-Citizenship in a Republic” Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 12, 1910
And he repeated the message again in 1912 to drive his point home.
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” (1912)
President Curt Kesselring
Maintenance Engineering
