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Theodore Roosevelt

26th President of the United States, 1901–1909; Governor of New York 1899–1900; Assistant Secretary of the Navy 1897–1898

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty. No kind of life is worth leading if it is always an easy life. I know that your life is hard; I know that your work is hard; and hardest of all for those of you who have the highest trained consciences, and who therefore always feel how much you ought to do. I know your work is hard, and that is why I congratulate you with all my heart. I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

KNOWOL, 10 March 2023 source ↗

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Stephen Sondheim Composer and lyricist for the musical theatre
Musicals are plays, but the last collaborator is your audience, so you've got to wait 'til the last collaborator comes in before you can complete the collaboration.
Recorded N/A, N/A, N/A source ↗
Arvid Carlsson Pharmacologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2000
I was fortunate even from that point of view because I got a very good research collaboration agreement with Upjohn, the American Upjohn company. So that could help me to go on with my research.
Recorded Adam Smith, Interview at the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, Nobel Prize Outreach, 9 April 2008 source ↗
Andrew Young Civil rights leader, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Mayor of Atlanta
I knew what I had done wrong. I had followed the experts and put the money I had in television. The second time around I spent almost no money on television. The only money I spent on television, I spent on Ted Turner's station, late at night on something called Creature Feature and wrestling. Because those were things that I knew people looked at. But we spent most of our money organizing people door-to-door.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, 28 June 1996 source ↗
Tony Cragg Sculptor
I was at the Royal College in 1977 and invited to exhibit in the Queen’s Jubilee exhibition. I was over the moon. I’ve had a lucky life. I pinch myself regularly. But every time a work turns out that I feel excited about, that’s the real reward.
Recorded The Guardian, 5 March 2017 source ↗

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Question How has a setback or failure set you up for later success? Failure & regret
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, and 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 the 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 know neither victory nor defeat.
Recorded Sorbonne, Paris, The American Presidency Project, University of California Santa Barbara, 23 April 1910 source ↗
Question What belief do you hold that most people around you would reject or find surprising? Values & belief
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Recorded Mental Floss, 10 March 2023 source ↗

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Tanni Grey-Thompson, Sir Roger Bannister, Arvid Carlsson, Tony Cragg, Abraham Verghese, Tadao Ando

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