Words are so powerful and the words you’ll read here are words that influence me, inspire me, motivate me and by and large keep me on track. I hope that you get some value from them to and please feel free to comment and share and if you have any of your own favorites please let me know.
The Man in The Arena
Excerpt from the speech "Citizenship in A Republic" delivered by Theodore Roosevelt at the Sorbonne, in Paris on 23 April, 1910.
“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.”
Invictus
Nelson Mandela’s favorite poem which he used to keep him going while incarcerated and which he gave to Francois Pienaar the day before the Springboks played Australia in the 1995 Rugby World Cup
By William Ernest Henley
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning’s of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.”
Don’t Quit
This white guy lived in the 1800’s in the US and was an anti-slavery campaigner when it wasn’t really popular to champion the cause of the slave community so the poem should be taken in that context
By John Greenleaf Whittier
“When things go wrong as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all up hill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.
Life is strange with its twists and turns
As every one of us sometimes learns
And many a failure comes about
When he might have won had he stuck it out;
Don't give up though the pace seems slow—
You may succeed with another blow.
Success is failure turned inside out—
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell just how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit—
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit.”
Taken from This Is Marketing, You Can’t be Seen Until You Learn to See (2018) by Seth Godin
“It is the marketing we do for ourselves, to ourselves, by ourselves, the story we tell ourselves, that can change everything. It’s what’s going to enable you to create value, to be missed if you were gone”
At the beginning of his book “Touching The Void”, Joe Simpson includes this quote from T.E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.