If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.
Interpretation
Taking risks is essential for achieving success and growth, despite the fear of failure.
Richard M. Nixon's quote highlights the importance of taking risks in life. While avoiding risks may prevent failure, it also inhibits growth and the possibility of achieving significant victories. This statement suggests that the willingness to face challenges and the potential for defeat is necessary for obtaining rewards and successes in life.
In practice
During a motivational speech to encourage the youth at a school assembly.
The destiny of our land, the air we breathe, the water we drink is not in the mystical hands of an uncontrollable agent, it is in our hands. A future which brings the balancing of our resources-preserving quality with quantity - is a future limited only by the boundaries of our will to get the job done.
The recent upsurge of public concern over environmental questions reflects a belated recognition that man has been too cavalier in his relations with nature. Unless we arrest the depredations that have been inflicted so carelessly on our natural systems-which exist in an intricate set of balances-we face the prospect of ecological disaster.
The ability to be cool, confident, and decisive in crisis is not an inherited characteristic but is the direct result of how well the individual has prepared himself for the battle.
If the President does it, it can't be illegal.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another - until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
Never has so much military and economic and diplomatic power been used so ineffectively, and if after all of this time, and all of this sacrifice, and all of this support, there is still no end in sight, then I say the time has come for the American people to turn to new leadership not tied to the mistakes and policies of the past.
Our deepest fears are like dragons, guarding our deepest treasure.
Never forget that the most political thing you can ever do is follow your heart.
There's nothing that's more unfair or unjust than people using their power to try to make other people feel small, to tell them who they are or what they are capable of, to say their identity doesn't belong.
Now as before, women must refuse to be meek and guileful, for truth cannot be served by dissimulation. Women who fancy that they manipulate the world by pussy power and gentle cajolery are fools. It is slavery to have to adopt such tactics.
It is very discouraging to be in a team with white athletes. On the track you are Tommie Smith, the fastest man in the world, but once you are in the dressing rooms you are nothing more than a dirty Negro.
The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
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