All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.
Interpretation
Even the most skilled speakers started with poor abilities.
This quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson emphasizes the idea that everyone, no matter how successful or skilled they become, starts off learning and often struggling. It serves as a reminder that improvement comes with practice and perseverance, encouraging individuals to embrace their initial failures as a necessary part of the journey toward mastery.
In practice
In a motivational speech to inspire students to practice public speaking.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
There are people who are able to plan their career, their future, but I've never had any talent for that. I just do things and hope for the best. Say yes, take a chance, and sometimes it's terrific and sometimes it's not.
Remember why you started, remember where you're headed, think of how great it will be to get there, and keep going.
Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.
Whatever happens, there are always things you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have done better. You score two goals and you usually feel you could have scored a third. That's perfectionism. That's what makes you progress in life.
I want everyone inside of Microsoft to take that responsibility. This is not about top-line growth. This is not about bottom-line growth. This is about us individually having a growth mindset.
You don't have to settle for the status quo, for being good enough, for getting by, for working all night.
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