Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
- Source
- The Strenuous Life, speech to the Hamilton Club, Chicago, 10 April 1899
- Written
- 1899
About this quotation
Roosevelt delivered these words to the Hamilton Club in Chicago when he was governor of New York. The same speech contains the passage on “the doctrine of the strenuous life”, and it gave its title to the collection of his essays and addresses published in 1900.