Theodore Roosevelt — Dust and Sweat and Blood

On April 23, 1910, Theodore Roosevelt stood in the Grand Amphitheater of the Sorbonne in Paris. He had been out of the White House for a year, had spent most of it hunting in East Africa, and was now working his way through the capitals of Europe giving speeches. The one he gave that day was titled "Citizenship in a Republic."

In the middle of it was a passage about the critic who counts for nothing and the man who is actually in the arena — "whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood," who errs and comes short again and again, and who at worst fails while daring greatly. The poster carries the opening of that passage.

The speech was long. One paragraph is all most people remember.

Roosevelt is here in outline only: the wide-brimmed hat, the pince-nez, the mustache, the heavy shoulders. The silhouette is a pale, almost gray blue, so faint it reads as a watermark. Over it the words run in a tall red serif, eight lines, ranged center, the letters thin enough that the profile shows through them. The pale figure gives the page its weight; the red gives it its voice.