Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

The quotation contrasts two kinds of future regret: remorse over actions taken versus the more enduring disappointment of opportunities avoided. By projecting the reader “twenty years from now,” it uses imagined hindsight to reframe present fear as temporary and present inaction as costly. The nautical imperatives—“throw off the bowlines,” “sail away from the safe harbor,” “catch the trade winds”—cast life as a voyage where security can become stagnation, and where purposeful risk enables growth. The final staccato verbs (“Explore. Dream. Discover.”) turn the message into a credo of agency: fulfillment comes from curiosity, aspiration, and lived experience rather than cautious self-protection.