Sports Quote of the Week – Theodore Roosevelt

Recently I’ve read a lot of criticism regarding athletes, and I’ve heard fans in the stands discussing the shortcomings of young athletes who are working hard to improve and reach their goals. Across North America, and here in Chatham-Kent, our young athletes face critics and set backs, but it’s easy to throw stones from the sidelines.

In fact, Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States, spoke of a similar circumstance in Paris in 1910. His speech/quote, entitled “Man in the Arena” has been used by coaches and athletes across the globe as motivation in the face of criticism and adversity. He shows athletes and people that despite our faults and failures, it’s important to get up and work even harder when things don’t go your way:

“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.”