{"id":18771,"date":"2015-02-17T11:42:16","date_gmt":"2015-02-17T16:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=18771"},"modified":"2015-02-17T11:42:16","modified_gmt":"2015-02-17T16:42:16","slug":"cadillacs-uncredited-theodore-roosevelt-quote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/17\/cadillacs-uncredited-theodore-roosevelt-quote\/","title":{"rendered":"Cadillac’s uncredited Theodore Roosevelt quote"},"content":{"rendered":"

Finishing the February 20th issue of Entertainment Weekly<\/em>, I glanced at the ad on the back cover, and was immediately puzzled. Wasn’t that a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s famous speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910?<\/p>\n

Cadillac wouldn’t just go ahead and use the quote without attribution, would it?<\/p>\n

\"CadillacAdTheodoreRooseveltQuote\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Cadillac would.<\/p>\n

At first, since I couldn’t remember the passage word for word, I thought the ad’s opening text was perhaps an allusion, rather than a wholesale uncredited taking of the entire quote, and the company could then be forgiven. But no, it’s indeed the actual Roosevelt quote, only severely slashed to fit the needs of a print ad in EW<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the entire quote, with the sections used shown in bold. <\/p>\n

It is not the critic
\n who counts;<\/strong><\/p>\n

not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.<\/p>\n

The credit belongs
\n to the man who is
\nactually in the arena,<\/strong><\/p>\n

whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; <\/p>\n

who strives valiantly;<\/strong><\/p>\n

who errs, who comes
\nshort again and again,<\/strong> <\/p>\n

because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; <\/p>\n

who knows
\ngreat enthusiasms,<\/strong><\/p>\n

the great devotions; <\/p>\n

who spends himself
\nin a worthy cause;<\/strong><\/p>\n

who at the best
\n knows in the end<\/p>\n

the triumph of
\nhigh achievement, <\/p>\n

and who at the worst, <\/p>\n

if he fails,
\nat least fails
\nwhile daring greatly<\/strong>,<\/p>\n

so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It turns out there’s a television commercial which uses almost the entirety of that section of the speech, save for the final line. Apparently this is all part of a relaunching of the brand<\/a> to air during the Oscars on February 22.<\/p>\n