I read that in high school, and it's part of the reason I became an engineer.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." --Teddy Roosevelt
"Optimism, pessimism, fuck that; we're going to make it happen. As God is my bloody witness, I'm hell-bent on making it work." I got goose bumps reading Elon's response at the end of the article.
The thing I like most about the startup I work for: if anything goes wrong, everyone just objectively addresses what happened, where we are now, and what to do to move forward - an obsessive focus on the next step to success.
"Because it's there. Everest is the highest mountain in the world, and no man has reached its summit. Its existence is a challenge. The answer is instinctive, a part, I suppose, of man's desire to conquer the universe." - George Mallory
Why do people run marathons? It's a personal challenge. Hundreds of thousands of people do non-record breaking runs which are pain, suffering and followed by elation at success.
That he was the first was a big part of it, but the reality is remove the words "never been climbed" and the sentence still works. Climbing everest, running a marathon, [insert challenging sports thing here] - each person strives within their own measure and tries to exceed their own expectations.
I read that in high school, and it's part of the reason I became an engineer.
"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." --Teddy Roosevelt