Success Quote by Rutherford B. Hayes

Hayes is selling bravery not as romance, but as policy - a president’s attempt to turn temperament into a governing principle. “Bold enterprises” sounds like boosterism until you notice how carefully it’s aimed: risk is framed as the only rational path to “successful,” as if caution is less prudent than self-defeating. The line isn’t really about courage; it’s about controlling the emotional weather around decision-making. “Take counsel” positions fear and hope like competing advisers in the cabinet, and Hayes is telling you which one to fire.

The subtext is diagnostic: fear gives good intelligence but terrible strategy. It keeps you alive, then keeps you small. Hope, by contrast, is treated as a form of expertise - not naive optimism, but a tool for committing to action when outcomes are uncertain. That’s a useful message in any “business,” but it lands differently coming from Hayes, a figure often remembered for managerial steadiness and for presiding over the fraught end of Reconstruction. In an era when the country was aggressively re-stitching itself while industrial capitalism accelerated, “bold enterprises” reads as reassurance to investors, reformers, and institution-builders: the future belongs to the actors who bet on it.

There’s also a moral sleight of hand. If success is what validates boldness, then failed risk-taking gets recast as timid thinking rather than bad judgment or structural constraint. Hayes offers a bracing ethic for ambition - and a convenient alibi for the powerful when boldness breaks things.