On
his website, David Luneau now quotes Theodore Roosevelt like this:
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.
According to
this, Roosevelt immediately went on to say:
...who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, 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 he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
In my opinion, Cornell's recent effort to obtain definitive Ivory-bill proof has been undeniably valiant, but clearly a failure.
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1 comment:
And I think the skeptics are the wind beneath their (the searchers) wings, along with those people that write the checks. While the skeptic may say, "most things point to the fact, you should give up now", the unintended effect on the believer/searcher is "I'll die trying." It's tempting to want
to sew things up and say.. "you've failed folks, go home".
Though 5-10 remaining pairs of these birds scattered through the
South could well be hidden
away in some unsearched pocket.
At least they are starting to square themselves to the strong
possibility of failure here and
they are impelling themselves with
Roosevelt's words to pull out
all the stops whatever the result.
They are also good publicity and
getting the public ready to view any failure as still noble, valiant, bold. Instead of just
dumb, crazy or misled by groupthink or worse.
Paul Sutera, New Paltz, NY
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