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Theodore Roosevelt
361 quotes
“We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have a given problem to solve. If we undertake the solution, there is, of course, always danger that we may not solve it aright; but to refuse to undertake the solution simply renders it certain that we cannot possibly solve it aright.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Throughout our history the success of the homemaker has been but another name for the up-building of the nation.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain pursuits—the pursuit of mere pleasure as a sufficient end in itself.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Besides each one of us working individually, all of us have got to work together. We cannot possibly do our best work as a nation unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act each individually for himself. The acting in combination can take many forms, but of course its most effective form must be when it comes in the shape of law —that is, of action by the community as a whole through the lawmaking body.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 do an infinity of mischief; but, after all, the best law can only prevent wrong and injustice, and give to the thrifty, the farseeing, and the hard-working a chance to exercise to best advantage their special and peculiar abilities.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our interests are at bottom common; in the long run we go up or go down together. Yet more and more it is evident that the state, and if necessary the nation, has got to possess the right of supervision and control as regards the great corporations which are its creatures; particularly as regards the great business combinations which derive a portion of their importance from the existence of some monopolistic tendency. The right should be exercised with caution and self restraint; but it should exist, so that it may be invoked if the need arises.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We admit with all sincerity that our first duty is within our own household; that we must not merely talk, but act, in favor of cleanliness and decency and righteousness, in all political, social, and civic matters. No prosperity and no glory can save a nation that is rotten at heart. We must ever keep the core of our national being sound, and see to it that not only our citizens in private life, but, above all, our statesmen in public life, practice the old commonplace virtues which from time immemorial have lain at the root of all true national wellbeing.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick—you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting; and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done to us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not prepared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No hard and fast rule can be laid down as to where our legislation shall stop in interfering between man and man, between interest and interest. All that can be said is that it is highly undesirable on the one hand, to weaken individual initiative, and on the other hand, that in a constantly increasing number of cases we shall find it necessary in the future to shackle cunning as in the past we have shackled force.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of state and the nation toward property.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let us make it evident that we intend to do justice. Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done us in return. Let us further make it evident that we use no words which we are not which prepared to back up with deeds, and that while our speech is always moderate, we are ready and willing to make it good. Such an attitude will be the surest possible guarantee of that self-respecting peace, the attainment of which is and must ever be the prime aim of a self-governing people.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combinations than where they live scattered and remote from one another... Under present-day conditions it is necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage workers.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them wherever need of such control is shown... [Applause] The immediate necessity in dealing with trusts is to place them under the real, not the nominal, control of some sovereign to which, as its creatures, the trusts owe allegiance, and in whose courts the sovereign's orders may be enforced. In my opinion, this sovereign must be the National Government.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To any nation that stands for human liberties, they have an Ally in the United States.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The tremendous and highly complex industrial development which went on with ever accelerated rapidity during the latter half of the nineteenth century brings us face to face, at the beginning of the twentieth, with very serious social problems. The old laws, and the old customs which had almost the binding force of law, were once quite sufficient to regulate the accumulation and distribution of wealth. Since the industrial changes which have so enormously increased the productive power of mankind, they are no longer sufficient.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The growth of cities has gone on beyond comparison faster than the growth of the country, and the upbuilding of the great industrial centers has meant a startling increase, not merely in the aggregate of wealth, but in the number of very large individual, and especially of very large corporate, fortunes. The creation of these great corporate fortunes has not been due to the tariff nor to any other governmental action, but to natural causes in the business world, operating in other countries as they operate in our own.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“to me there is a most melancholy side to it, when you touch upon what is fundamentally infinitely more important than any other question in this country - that is, the question of race suicide, complete or partial, which must follow from the attitude of our people as a whole toward wifehood, motherhood, and fatherhood .. the man or woman who deliberately avoids marriage and has a heart so cold as to know no passion and a brain so shallow and selfish as to dislike having children, is in effect a criminal against the race and should be an object of contemptuous abhorrence by all healthy people”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1902 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 18 October 1902 letter quoted here
“I feel that you have not only reflected honor upon the state which for its good fortune has you as its chief executive, but upon the whole nation. It is incumbent upon every man throughout this country not only to hold up your hands in the course you have been following, but to show his realization that the matter is one of vital concern to us all.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All thoughtful men must feel that gravest alarm over the growth of lynching in this country and especially over the peculiarly hideous form so often taken by mob violence when colored men are the victims, on which occasion the mob seems to lay most weight, not on the crime, but on the color of the criminal.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a certain proportion of these cases the man lynched has been guilty of a crime horrible beyond description; a crime so horrible that as far as he himself is concerned he has forfeited the right to any kind of sympathy whatsoever. The feeling of all good citizens that such a hideous crime shall not be hideously punished by mob violence is due not in the least to sympathy for the criminal, but to a very lively sense of the train of dreadful consequences which follows the course taken by the mob in exacting inhuman vengeance for an inhuman wrong.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Especially is this true where the lynching is accompanied with torture. There are certain hideous sights which when once seen can never be wholly erased from the mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation. This is a thousandfold stronger when, instead of merely seeing the deed, the man has participated in it. Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful torture of fire must forever have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This matter of lynching would be a terrible thing even if it stopped with the lynching of men guilty of the inhuman and hideous crime of rape; but, as a matter of fact, lawlessness of this type never does stop and never can stop in such fashion. Every violent man in the community is encouraged by every case of lynching, in which the lynchers go unpunished, to himself take the law into his own hands whenever it suits his own convenience. In the same way the use of torture by the mob in certain cases is sure to spread until it is applied more or less indiscriminately in other cases.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Surely, no patriot can fail to see the fearful brutalization and debasement which the indulgence of such a spirit and such practices inevitably portend. Surely, all public men, all writers for the daily press, all clergymen, all teachers, all who in any way have a right to address the public, should, with every energy, unite to denounce such crimes and to support those engaged in putting them down.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a people we claim the right to speak with peculiar emphasis for freedom and for fair treatment of all men without regard to differences of race, fortune, creed or color. We forfeit the right so to speak when we commit or condone such crimes as these of which I speak.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are good citizens and bad citizens in every class as in every locality, and the attitude of decent people toward great public and social questions should be determined, not by the accidental questions of employment or locality, but by those deep-set principles which represent the innermost souls of men.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The failure in public and in private life thus to treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of this government as being either for the poor as such or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Republic, as such failure and such recognition have always proved fatal in the past to other republics. A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections. As soon as it becomes government by a class or by a section, it departs from the old American ideal.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the States; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or in envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to do justice to others.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally, we must keep ever in mind that a republic such as ours can exist only by virtue of the orderly liberty which comes through the equal domination of the law over all men alike, and through its administration in such resolute and fearless fashion as shall teach all that no man is above it and no man below it.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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; and the two things hang together. The same qualities that make a decent boy make a decent man. They have different manifestations, but fundamentally they are the same. If a boy has not got pluck and honesty and common-sense he is a pretty poor creature; and he is a worse creature if he is a man and lacks any one of those three traits.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Because much has been given to you, therefore we have a right to expect much from you; and we have a right to expect that you shall begin to give that much just as soon as you leave school and go to college, so that you shall count when you are there.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness can not come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While ever careful to refrain from wrongdoing others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid. No weak nation that acts manfully and justly should ever have cause to fear us, and no strong power should ever be able to single us out as a subject for insolent aggression.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is unwise to depart from the old American tradition and discriminate for or against any man who desires to come here and become a citizen, save on the ground of that man's fitness for citizenship. ... We can not afford to consider whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Gentile; whether he is Englishman or Irishman, Frenchman or German, Japanese, Italian, or Scandinavian, or Magyar. What we should desire to find out is the individual quality of the individual man.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1900 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Business of Transatlantic Migration between Europe and the United States, 1900–1914 (2012), by Drew Keeling, p. 161
“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 human being speak reverently of this motto on the coins or show any sign of having appealed to any high emotion in him. But I have literally hundreds of times heard it used as an occasion of, and incitement to, the sneering ridicule which it is above all things undesirable that so beautiful and exalted a phrase should excite.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Congress alters the law and directs me to replace on the coins the sentence in question the direction will be immediately put into effect; but I very earnestly trust that the religious sentiment of the country, the sprit of reverence in this country, will prevent any such action being taken.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) said by 1919 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suppose my critics will call that preaching, but I have got such a bully pulpit!”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1909 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by Lyman Abbott, in The Outlook (27 February 1909); repeated in the New York Times (6 March 1909); "Bully" in this sense was common slang adjective for "admirable", "excellent".
“I don't think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: University of Cambridge, England (26 May 1910)
“Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Rural Life", in The Outlook (27 August 1910), republished in American Problems (vol. 16 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., 1926), chapter 20, p. 146
“The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech before the Colorado Live Stock Association, Denver, Colorado (August 29, 1910); in The New Nationalism (1910), p. 52; also inscribed on Cox Corridor II, a first floor House corridor, U.S. Capitol.
“I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address in Des Moines, Iowa (4 November 1910)