Self-Reliance

That's Dad, with his first bike. He earned the money to buy it by collecting old newspapers and selling them for fifty cents a hundred pounds. He'd go out through the neighborhood with his wagon, knocking on doors, and hauling away their old papers. When he'd hauled a ton of newspaper, he had enough to buy his bike.

You can see the pride on his face. Times were hard in 1939, and this was maybe the first time he'd really been a Rainmaker.

Nobody can give that to you, although a lot of folks these days would like to. It's here that "helicopter parents" most damage their children, by not letting them try and fail.

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, who 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 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 neither know victory nor defeat.

- Theodore Roosevelt, 1910 "Paris Speech"

I sometimes fear that we're losing this, that a generation of Americans is growing up without the chance to feel this thrill of success for themselves. But I look at my nephew, Lance Cpl. Dan, and think that there are indeed young Americans that carry this torch forward.

Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson