A favorite quote about courage

I first came across this quote in the early 1980s, when I was living in Denver. I was fortunate to have many friends who were entrepreneurs and who were striving to succeed in ventures of their own. I've known many who were "actually in the arena", and my life is richer because of them.

These words were spoken 100 years ago, but there are as fresh and applicable today as they were then.

"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."

From the "Citizenship in a Republic" speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910, by Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt - 26th President of the United States (1858-1919).