Awesome quote shamelessly pulled from TechCrunch (I’d link to their Crunchbase entry if I could), who shamelessly pulled it from Yossi Vardi, who shameless pulled it from Theodore Roosevelt:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

This really resonated with me in light of the public (and anonymous) attacks on Jason Goldberg (CEO of Jobster) on the Seattle PI blog. I make no bones about the fact that I wasn’t always supportive of Jobster’s (or Jason’s) strategies. But the guy deserves credit for making a run at it (and I wouldn’t count Jason or Jobster out of the game yet!). He also deserves a ton of credit for getting an entire industry to look at Jobster to save online recruiting… If it turns out that Jobster doesn’t save online recruiting, there’s a small army of people who should step up and share part of the blame (including myself). Scapegoating is just stupid.