Daily Inspiration Quote by Frank Moore Colby

Progress gets most of the applause, but Colby is quietly pointing at what actually makes the trek bearable: witnesses. As an educator, he’s writing from inside a system that pretends the destination is everything - grades, credentials, measurable outcomes - while day-to-day experience is mostly uncertainty, detours, and half-finished selves. The line lands because it admits a truth most ambition narratives try to edit out: the fear isn’t failure so much as solitude.

The phrasing is slyly democratic. “We” turns private anxiety into a shared condition, and “nearly so much as” performs a gentle reversal, like he’s letting the reader keep their pride about goals while smuggling in the real confession. Not arriving “anywhere” is framed as tolerable; what’s intolerable is moving through time without companionship, without the small proofs that your life is intersecting with other lives. Company isn’t just social comfort here - it’s meaning-making. People validate effort, turn setbacks into stories, and keep the journey from feeling like wasted motion.

Context matters: Colby lived in an era when modern mobility and modern bureaucracy were accelerating at once, promising upward motion while also atomizing people. Read against that backdrop, the quote sounds like an early critique of hustle culture before the hustle had a name. It suggests that the point of striving isn’t only to reach a place; it’s to be seen, understood, and accompanied while you’re still en route.