Advice from the past

I was reading one of President Theodore Roosevelt’s many speeches, this one from January 15, 1883 on “Duties of American Citizenship.”

“In facing the future…we should be neither timid pessimists nor foolish optimists. We should recognize the dangers that exist and that threaten us: we should neither overestimate them nor shrink from them, but steadily fronting them should set to work to overcome and beat them down…There is every reason why we should recognize them, but there is no reason why we should fear them or doubt our capacity to overcome them, if only each will…endeavor so to live as to...