Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.

Often attributed to Babe Ruth, the line uses baseball’s most familiar failure—striking out—as a metaphor for the broader risks of ambition. Its point is that fear of failure can be more limiting than failure itself: if you avoid taking swings, you guarantee you won’t achieve the big outcomes that require bold attempts. The quote resonates with Ruth’s public image as a power hitter who accepted strikeouts as the price of home-run production, making it a compact statement of a “high-variance” philosophy: progress and standout success frequently demand tolerating visible mistakes and repeated setbacks.