Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

The line juxtaposes aspiration with practicality: “eyes on the stars” evokes idealism, ambition, and long-range moral or civic purpose, while “feet on the ground” insists on realism, discipline, and attention to concrete duties. Read together, it advocates a Rooseveltian balance—strenuous striving without losing contact with facts, limits, and everyday responsibilities. The aphorism’s appeal lies in its portable counsel: dream boldly, but execute steadily. It can also be taken as a warning against two opposite failures—cynical smallness (never looking up) and impractical utopianism (floating above the ground).