Theodore Roosevelt

Quotes

• “This was a period of confusion. The ancient concepts of the rights of man was in conflict with the expansion and needs o...”
• “It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here ...”
• “Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting wi...”
• “A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and, above all, it is a life which ultimately unfits tho...”
• “A great democratic commonwealth should seek to produce and reward that individual distinction which results in the effic...”
• “The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the other n...”
• “The American people should itself do these things for the immigrants. If we leave the immigrant to be helped by represen...”
• “I second the nomination of Theodore Roosevelt because he is one of the few men in our public life who has been responsiv...”
• “I want to speak to you first of all as regards your duties as boys; and in the next place as regards your duties as men;...”
• “In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen be...”
• “My dear Roosevelt You have established a record as the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon. I should long ago have wr...”
• “We need, in the interest of the community at large, a rigid system of game laws rigidly enforced, and it is not only adm...”
• “We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to brin...”
• “As regards to its use on the coinage we have actual experience by which to go. In all my life I have never heard any hum...”
• “In our complex industrial civilization of today the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth hav...”
• “While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We...”
• “I have not been able to think out any solution of the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this cont...”
• “I do not intend to appoint any unfit man to office. So far as I legitimately can I shall always endeavor to pay regard t...”
• “Our whole experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the fullest sense of the word, in the broa...”
• “No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, betwee...”
• “In the same period ex-President Theodore Roosevelt loudly recalled his successful amputation of land from Colombia: "I t...”
• “First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, de...”
• “The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive in...”
• “The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a sm...”
• “Surely, no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement which the indulgence of such a spirit and su...”
• “Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy...”
• “The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; ...”
• “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save e...”
• “Most emphatically I do wish that the people should have the right to recall the decision, and authoritatively to stamp w...”
• “It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connect...”
• “Of all the officers of the Government, those of the Department of Justice should be kept most free from any suspicion of...”
• “The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the mas...”
• “If the courts have the final say-so on all legislative acts, and if no appeal can lie from them to the people, then they...”
• “Teddy had been far to the left for a Republican-but still right of center as far as the Democrats were concerned-and had...”
• “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort,...”
• “The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the mas...”
• “In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily, and in the great majority of cases...”
• “The whole world is bound together as never before; the bonds are sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but they ar...”
• “That the principles for which these three men stood might be still more firmly established destiny raised up Theodore Ro...”
• “The peace the President had made possible at Portsmouth was the result of just such an inexplicable ability to impose hi...”
• “The State must be made efficient for the work which concerns only the people of the State; and the nation for that which...”
• “The bosses of the Democratic party and the bosses of the Republican party alike have a closer grip than ever before on t...”
• “But it is not possible ever to insure prosperity merely by law. Something for good can be done by law, and a bad law can...”
• “The people themselves must be the ultimate makers of their own Constitution, and where their agents differ in their inte...”
• “I feel that you have not only reflected honor upon the state which for its good fortune has you as its chief executive, ...”
• “The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his ...”
• “Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combi...”
• “To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the ...”
• “If our farmers now used the wasteful methods that served for their great grand-fathers they would not merely fail in the...”
• “The man who does nothing cuts the same sordid figure in the pages of history, whether he be a cynic, or fop, or voluptua...”