Wednesday Wisdom
Really Great work
One of the reasons Theodore Roosevelt resonates today is the continuity of many of his beliefs and political opinions throughout his life. And here at the Theodore Roosevelt Center, we are always excited when we find foreshadowing of now famous lines in earlier speeches, especially since some of his most quotable lines are from later in his life.
Today’s #WednesdayWisdom is a great example of an early iteration of ideas Roosevelt developed more fully in his Citizenship in a Republic speech in 1910: “All really great work is rough in the doing, though it seems smooth enough to those who look back upon it, or the contemporaries who overlook it from afar.”
Although Roosevelt would say it more memorably in his 1910 speech mentioning the man in the arena whose face was “marred by dust and sweat and blood,” today’s Wednesday Wisdom, which comes from a speech at the Centennial Meeting of the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church at Carnegie Hall in New York on May 20, 1902, also emphasizes that work worth doing is rugged in the midst of it.
What’s unique about this 1902 quotation as compared to Roosevelt’s famous man in the arena line is that Roosevelt also mentioned people who looked back on the “really great work.” Such work doesn’t look smooth just to the critic—or what Roosevelt called the contemporary overlooking it from afar in his 1902 speech—it also looks effortless to those in the future looking back.
Although Roosevelt delivered these lines in 1902 in the context of a speech celebrating one hundred years of missionary work of the Presbyterian Church, praising missionaries who faced hardship “whatever their shortcomings,” we also think it applies more generally, much like his man in the arena quotation.
For us, it encapsulates Roosevelt’s emphasis on the strenuous life and taking tasks head-on no matter how challenging they might be. For Roosevelt, it was better to work hard—even if it was rough—and be in the arena instead of looking in from afar.
Read the entire speech here: https://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/digital-library/o290032/