Citizenship in a Republic is the title of a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt, former President of the United States, at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910.
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.Someone who is heavily involved in a situation that requires courage, skill, or tenacity, as opposed to someone sitting on the sidelines and watching, is often referred to as "the man in the arena".
The "Man in the Arena" passage was quoted by another U.S. president, Richard Nixon, both in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, and in his resignation address to the nation on August 8, 1974:[4] Sometimes I have succeeded and sometimes I have failed, but always I have taken heart from what Theodore Roosevelt once said about the man in the arena, "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood [...]"Nelson Mandela gave a copy of this speech to François Pienaar, captain of the South African rugby team, before the start of the 1995 Rugby World Cup,[5] in which the South African side eventually defeated the heavily favoured All Blacks of New Zealand.
[10] At the annual CaseIT MIS Case Competitions, Dr. Peter Tingling, Associate Dean at Simon Fraser University's Beedie School of Business, retold the story of the "Man in the Arena" in the opening ceremony to inspire competitors.
Tom Brady named his ESPN+ docuseries “Man in the Arena,” drawing directly from the famous passage in Theodore Roosevelt’s “Citizenship in a Republic”.