Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

I am part of everything that I have read. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The bulk of government is not legislation but administration. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one's sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Want More Advice Like This? ~ Theodore Roosevelt

To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as a people, we must have trees. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In speaking to you men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There is no effort without error or shortcoming. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Books are the ammunition of life. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Every lynching represents by just so much a loosening of the bands of civilisation; that the spirit of lynching inevitably throws into prominence in the community all the foul and evil creatures who dwell therein. No man can take part in the torture of a human being without having his own moral nature permanently lowered ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A man can of course hold public office, and many a man does hold public office, and lead a public career of a sort, even if there are other men who possess secrets about him which he cannot afford to have divulged. But no man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and Ive got such a bully pulpit! ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

When the time of danger comes, all Americans, whatever their social standing, whatever their creed, whatever the training they have received, no matter from what section of the country they have come, stand together as men, as Americans, and are content to face the same fate and do the same duties because fundamentally they all alike have the common purpose to serve the glorious flag of their common country. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight ... It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I wish that all Americans would realize that American politics is world politics. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Power always brings with it responsibility. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

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. 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. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was a conservative who adopted progressive policies. ~ Walter Lippmann

The mass of the American people are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In the great battle of life, no brilliancy of intellect, no perfection of bodily development, will count when weighed in the balance against the assemblage of virtues, active and passive, of moral qualities which we group together under the name of character. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The civilized people of today look back with horror at their medieval ancestors who wantonly destroyed great works of art or sat slothfully by while they destroyed. We have passed this stage ... Here in the U.S. we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy our forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at best it looks as if our people were awakening. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources ... But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil and the gas are exhausted. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majesty all unmarred. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I like to see Quentin (Roosevelt) practicing baseball. It gives me hope that one of my boys will not take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the national game. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to join American forces in combat as Lafayette was. The two shared a child's ideal of manly military glory. Though in Lafayette's defense, he was an actual teenager, unlike the thirty-nine-year-old TR. ~ Sarah Vowell

All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The good citizen will demand liberty for himself, and as a matter of pride he will see to it that others receive the liberty which he thus claims as his own. Probably the best test of true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country. Not only should there be complete liberty in matters of religion and opinion, but complete liberty for each man to lead his life as he desires, provided only that in so doing he does not wrong his neighbor. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, orKnights oftheIsoscelesTriangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Practical equality of opportunity for all citizens, when we achieve it, will have two great results. First, every man will have a fair chance to make of himself all that in him lies; to reach the highest point to which his capacities, unassisted by special privilege of his own and unhampered by the special privilege of others, can carry him, and to get for himself and his family substantially what he has earned. Second, equality of opportunity means that the commonwealth will get from every citizen the highest service of which he is capable. No man who carries the burden of the special privileges of another can give to the commonwealth that service to which it is fairly entitled. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The Bad Lands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The distinctive crimes of this generation are crimes of subtlety and finesse.
- ALEXANDER S. BACON 1908 ~ J.M. Carlisle

Each child represents either a potential addition to the protective capacity and enlightened citizenship of the nation or, if allowed to suffer from neglect, a potential addition to the destructive forces of a community ... The interests of the nation are involved in the welfare of this array of children no less than in our great material affairs. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Now and then we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness, from animals that in the hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man: the coyotes wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the snorting and stamping of a deer. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Never hit if you can help it, but when you have to, hit hard. Never hit soft. You'll never get any thanks for hitting soft. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

What I have advocated is not wild radicalism. It is the highest and wisest kind of conservatism. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The truth is that any good modern rifle is good enough. The determining factor is the man behind the gun. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Make preparations in advance ... you never have trouble if you are prepared for it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

One of the prime dangers of civilization has always been its tendency to cause the loss of virile fighting virtues, of the fighting edge. When men get too comfortable and lead too luxurious lives, there is always a danger lest the softness eat like an acid into their manliness of fiber. The ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The object of government is the welfare of the people. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality . All else is immorality. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We can just as little afford to follow the doctrinaires of an extreme individualism as the doctrinaires of an extreme socialism. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I hold it to be our duty to see that the wage-worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, shall get their fair share of business prosperity. But it either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit from it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

A politician who really serves his country well, and deserves his country's gratitude, must usually possess some of the hardy virtues which we admire in the soldier who serves his country well in the field. Far ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I never won anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We want the active and zealous help of every man far-sighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Don't limit your challenges - challenge your limits.
Don't spread patriotism too thin. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Kissinger traces the balances made in foreign policy, including that of realism and idealism, from the times of Cardinal Richelieu through chapters on Theodore Roosevelt the realist and Woodrow Wilson the idealist. Kissinger, a European refugee who has read Metternich more avidly than Jefferson, is unabashedly in the realist camp. "No other nation," he wrote in Diplomacy, "has ever rested its claim to international leadership on its altruism." Other Americans might proclaim this as a point of pride; when Kissinger says it, his attitude seems that of an anthropologist examining a rather unsettling tribal ritual. The practice of basing policy on ideals rather than interests, he pointed out, can make a nation seem dangerously unpredictable. ~ Walter Isaacson

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven't time to read. ~ David McCullough

A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

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, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

But the joy of life is a very good thing, and while work is the essential in it, play also has its place. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The wild life of today is not ours to do with as we please. The original stock was given to us in trust for the benefit both of the present and the future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Individual, what is most important is to insist on the vital need of combining certain sets of qualities, ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Hat whole phrase, "daring greatly," is from the Theodore Roosevelt quote that goes back to your original question of, what about the critics? And when I read his quote it was life-changing. "It's not the critic who counts; it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better. ~ Brene Brown

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

I do not care a rap as to who gets credit for the work, provided the work is done. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office - any other theory is incompatible with the foundation principles of our government. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

We shouldn't let the Republicans off the hook. Theodore Roosevelt, we learned from Jeff Cowan's new book, was just as bad as certainly [Louis] Brandeis was, or many Democrats were on the question of segregation. ~ Jeffrey Rosen

I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in ... a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, ... increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Malefactors of great wealth have arrogantly ignored the public welfare. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Only those who live and sleep in the open fully realize the beauty of dawn and moonlight and starlight. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Here is Theodore Roosevelt with all his faults and with all his strengths - the devoted family man, the passionate game hunter, the astute politician, the frustrated warrior. This is a deeply moving account of the last years of a very great man, ~ David Herbert Donald

And it is through strife and the readiness for strife that a man or a nation must win greatness. So, let the world know that we are here and willing to pour out our blood, our treasure, our tears. And that America is ready and if need be desirous of battle ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Whatever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Our words must be judged by our deeds; and in striving for a lofty ideal we must use practical methods; and if we cannot attain all at one leap, we must advance towards it step by step, reasonably content so long as we do actually make some progress in the right direction. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

At bottom, the court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics. ~ John Paul Stevens

There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The government is us; WE are the government, you and I.- Theodore Roosevelt ~ Theodore Roosevelt

My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Progress has brought us both unbounded opportunities and unbridled difficulties. Thus, the measure of our civilization will not be that we have done much, but what we have done with that much. I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism. The thought of modern industry in the hands of Christian charity is a dream worth dreaming. The thought of industry in the hands of paganism is a nightmare beyond imagining. The choice between the two is upon us. ~ Theodore Roosevelt