This is an interesting speech by an inspirational individual: Diana Nyad. At age 64, she swam for 55h straight hours from Cuba to Florida.

In this TED talk she shares her journey. Her key message: Never, ever give up!

She is very, very confident in this talk. Almost to the brink of being REALLY confident, as demonstrated by the closing of her speech, where she refers back to what she had learned during her various endeavours:

“…the truth is, I’m walking around tall because I am that bold, fearless person, and I will be, every day, until it’s time for these days to be done.”

But there is clearly something inspirational in her story, which gives us a nice glimpse to ever further push ourselves and our limits and also not accept age as a limiting factor.

She uses three quotes in her speech that resonate with me:

“When you achieve your dreams, it’s not so much what you get as who you have become in achieving them.”

Henry David Thoreau

“To be is to do.”

Socrates

And finally, she briefly quotes this one by Theodore Roosevelt, which is one of my all time favourite quotes:

“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.”