The importance of being the best

"The twentieth century looms before us big with the fate of many nations,"  "If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world." - Theodore Roosevelt, 10 April 1899.