Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

528 Sourced Quotes

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

Theodore Roosevelt
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt
No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.

Theodore Roosevelt
I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
This is the first known use of this phrase, which became a signature motto of Roosevelt's after he used it in a speech as Vice-President at the Minnesota State Fair

Theodore Roosevelt
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

Theodore Roosevelt
Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
To his children

Theodore Roosevelt
For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Theodore Roosevelt
More and more, as it becomes necessary to preserve the game, let us hope that the camera will largely supplant the rifle.

Theodore Roosevelt
No nation deserves to exist if it permits itself to lose the stern and virile virtues; and this without regard to whether the loss is due to the growth of a heartless and all-absorbing commercialism, to prolonged indulgence in luxury and soft, effortless ease, or to the deification of a warped and twisted sentimentality.

Theodore Roosevelt
Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above is character.

Theodore Roosevelt
The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers.

Theodore Roosevelt
I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding

Theodore Roosevelt
There is nothing more practical than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions of mankind

Theodore Roosevelt
There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel.

Theodore Roosevelt
We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.

Theodore Roosevelt
We have duties to others, and duties to ourselves, and we cannot shirk either.

Theodore Roosevelt
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
What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice.

Theodore Roosevelt
It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.

Theodore Roosevelt
Alike for the nation and the individual, the one indispensable requisite is character.

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
I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.

Theodore Roosevelt
It pays no matter what comes after it, to try and do things, to accomplish things in this life and not merely to have a soft and pleasant time.

Theodore Roosevelt
The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

Theodore Roosevelt
I enter a most earnest plea that in our hurried and rather bustling life of today we do not lose the hold that our forefathers had on the Bible. I wish to see the Bible study as much a matter of course in the secular colleges as in the seminary. No educated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible, and no uneducated man can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.

Theodore Roosevelt
The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.

Theodore Roosevelt
A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

Theodore Roosevelt
A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals.

Theodore Roosevelt
The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.

Theodore Roosevelt
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