Roll the Dice, Progress Forward

"It is not the critic who counts... 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... who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly."

Theodore Roosevelt delivered those words at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910, in a speech called "Citizenship in a Republic." Its real subject wasn't heroism — it was the citizen. Roosevelt argued that a democratic republic lives or dies not on its critics or even its leaders, but on ordinary men and women willing to step into the arena and do the work: to build, to risk, to fail, and to try again.

If 250 years of American progress were represented by the familiar layout of a Monopoly board it might like the illustration below. As you read your way around the board think of all the Americans who have taken their place in the arena. Every square on this board is someone who rolled the dice and moved forward — inventors, builders, farmers, founders, dreamers. We have always been risk-takers. That's the American character, and it's the reason there's this much progress to celebrate.