Most of us have heard this familiar Eleanor Roosevelt quote: "With freedom comes responsibility." But many people haven’t heard the context of the quote—what Eleanor wrote just before that famous line in her book, You Learn By Living:

"There was a spiritual safety in what was old and established and familiar; in what was, or seemed to be, permanent. People knew what was expected of them. They understood the conditions had to deal with. They accepted the dogmas of their period.

"But today where are these familiar things? Where are these known conditions? Where is the old safety? Instead, we find ourselves in an unfamiliar world, attempting to deal with unknown factors, having to blaze new trails for ourselves.

“‘Anxiety,’ Kierkegaard said, ‘is the dizziness of freedom.’ This freedom of which men speak, for which they fight, seems to some people a perilous thing. It has to be earned at a bitter cost and then—it has to be lived with. For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect."

As an entrepreneur, I immediately related to this message, because that is what we are doing as entrepreneurs—blazing new trails. We are designing our own professional lives and building our legacies. The territory is unfamiliar, unconventional, unboring—and totally exhilarating!

I hope this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt inspires you as much as it inspired me.

Do you have a favorite quote that inspires you to do what you do every day? Share it with me in the comments.