What I’ve Learned from Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena”
Be careful with the words you listen to, and the words you say.
Paris, 1910. Theodore Roosevelt visited Sorbonne and gave a speech titled Citizenship in a Republic. Within that 35-page speech, there’s one passage that’s particularly famous, known as The Man in the Arena. This passage is arguably the most iconic speech Roosevelt has ever given.
Many notable people have quoted the passage in their own speeches or writings, such as US presidents Richard Nixon, and later, Barack Obama. There are also some celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth who even tattooed the words into their bodies.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this passage lately because it’s message is incredibly powerful, and some things that happened recently made me recall it again and again in my mind. It has taught me an important lesson, and I believe it can be useful to you, too.
Before we get to the passage itself, let me give you some context.
The Trigger
The other day, I stumbled upon some random person’s Twitter account. I found one of his tweets to be pretentious, so I got curious about him and scrolled further to find out what he’s on about (a decision I’ll regret later, but the…
