In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.

The saying urges decisive action over paralysis. It ranks choices not by moral purity alone but by their capacity to move events: doing the right thing is ideal; even doing the wrong thing at least engages reality and can be corrected; doing nothing forfeits agency and allows problems to worsen unchecked. The sentiment fits Roosevelt’s public persona—energetic, interventionist, impatient with timidity—and reflects a broader ethic of strenuous engagement with civic and personal duties. As a maxim, it is often used to encourage leadership under uncertainty, where perfect knowledge is unavailable and inaction can be the most consequential decision of all.