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Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Approximate author period: c. 1888 AD · industrial

Meaning not yet available

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Attribution & collection notes
Author or tradition
Theodore Roosevelt
Attribution: attributed
Country attributed
Not established
A country attribution does not establish the earliest origin.
Historical period
Approximate author period: c. 1888 AD · industrial
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1858 to 1919; Wikidata Q33866, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33866 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
An author lifetime, approximate period or collection date is not necessarily the date when these words were first written or spoken.
Recorded source
The Optimist’s Good Morning (1911) (1911 AD)

Complete signed selection 80; printed byline: Theodore Roosevelt; Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1911; printed copyright 1907

A collection's publication date can be later than the words it records.