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 short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end 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 know neither victory nor defeat.
–Theodore Roosevelt
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.
–Scaramouche (Rafael Sabatini)
The future belongs to those who give the next generation reason for hope.
–Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.
–Thucydides
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. . . By being happy we sow anonymous benefits upon the world, which remain unknown even to ourselves.
–Robert Louis Stevenson
Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear, nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear the sound of wings. How can life grant us boon of living, compensate for dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate, unless we dare the soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay with courage to behold the restless day and count it fair.
–Amelia Earhart
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
–Helen Keller
Remember this lesson. History does not teach fatalism. There are moments when the will of a handful of free men breaks through determinism and opens up new roads. People get the history they deserve.
–Charles de Gaulle
Be regular and orderly in your life, like a good bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
–Gustave Flaubert
Nothing we do can change the past, but everything we do changes the future.
–Ashleigh Brilliant
One is happy as a result of one’s own efforts, once one knows of the necessary ingredients of happiness–simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial to a point, love of work, and, above all, a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.
–George Sand
What limits people is that they don’t have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it.
–Tom Robbins
Truth is life.
–Frank Lloyd Wright
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
–George Orwell
Leadership Quotations adapted from Serve to Lead.
