Posted by:
Brother Of Jerry
(
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Date: March 03, 2021 03:57PM
I could comment on the banality of Mormon meetings, but I doubt I could add anything better than what D&D already said. I can throw in a bit about Theodore Roosevelt. The TR quote is a theme he is justly famous for.
Probably his most famous speech is now popularly known as "The Man in the Arena" speech. I looked it up to grab a quote from it, and found out that it was delivered at the Sorbonne, so a little shout out to Soft Machine! :)
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/63389/roosevelts-man-arenaFrom the article:
"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."
The speech was a wild success. According to Morris—who calls it “one of [Roosevelt’s] greatest rhetorical triumphs”—“Citizenship in a Republic” ran in the Journal des Debats as a Sunday supplement, got sent to the teachers of France by Le Temps, was printed by Librairie Hachette on Japanese vellum, was turned into a pocket book that sold 5000 copies in five days, and was translated across Europe. Roosevelt, Morris writes, “was surprised at its success, admitting to Henry Cabot Lodge that the reaction of the French was ‘a little difficult for me to understand.’”