Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

528 Sourced Quotes

I have now run up against an ugly snag, the Sunday Excise Law. It is altogether too strict, but I have no honorable alternative save to enforce it and I am enforcing it, to the furious rage of the saloon keepers, and of many good people too; for which I am sorry.

Theodore Roosevelt
The first duty of an American citizen, then, is that he shall work in politics.

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
From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.

Theodore Roosevelt
The eighth commandment reads, "Thou shalt not steal." It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the rich man." It does not read, "Thou shalt not steal from the poor man." It reads simply and plainly, "Thou shalt not steal."

Theodore Roosevelt
Courage is not having the strength to go on, it is going on when you don't have the strength. Industry and determination can do anything that genius and advantage can do and many things that they cannot.

Theodore Roosevelt
It is a great mistake to think that the extremist is a better man than the moderate. Usually the difference is not that he is morally stronger, but that he is intellectually weaker. He is not more virtuous. He is simply more foolish.

Theodore Roosevelt
The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.

Theodore Roosevelt
We have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the United States.

Theodore Roosevelt
It is by no means necessary that a great nation should always stand at the heroic level. But no nation has the root of greatness in it unless in time of need it can rise to the heroic mood.

Theodore Roosevelt
If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

Theodore Roosevelt
Every special interest is entitled to justice full, fair and complete....but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench or to representation in any public office.

Theodore Roosevelt
The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for... the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use.

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
The decisions of the courts on economic and social questions depend on their economic and social philosophy.

Theodore Roosevelt
The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic -- the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.

Theodore Roosevelt
Every man, who parrots the cry of 'stand by the President' without adding the proviso 'so far as he serves the Republic' takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.

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
Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things...

Theodore Roosevelt
No ordinary work done by a man is either as hard or as responsible as the work of a woman who is bringing up a family of small children; for upon her time and strength demands are made not only every hour of the day but often every hour of the night.

Theodore Roosevelt
Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.

Theodore Roosevelt
Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.

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

Theodore Roosevelt
Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words, but in our deeds, that we are earnestly desirous of securing their good will by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights.

Theodore Roosevelt
Abraham Lincoln - the spirit incarnate of those who won victory in the Civil War - was the true representative of this people, not only for his own generation, but for all time, because he was a man among men.

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

Theodore Roosevelt
To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.

Theodore Roosevelt
The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.

Theodore Roosevelt
'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.

Theodore Roosevelt
I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.

Theodore Roosevelt