who is actually in the arena, who strives valiantly, who errs, but who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.
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 them 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, who comes short again and
again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does
actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in 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
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Shame on the man of cultivated
taste who permits refinement to develop into fastidiousness that unfits him for
doing the rough work of a workaday world.
http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/speeches/maninthearena.pdf