Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

528 Sourced Quotes

It is not only highly desirable but necessary that there should be legislation which shall carefully shield the interests of wage-workers, and which shall discriminate in favor of the honest and humane employer by removing the disadvantage under which he stands when compared with unscrupulous competitors who have no conscience and will do right only under fear of punishment.

Theodore Roosevelt
No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community.

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

Theodore Roosevelt
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
I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.

Theodore Roosevelt
The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art.

Theodore Roosevelt
No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.

Theodore Roosevelt
I hold that in this country there must be complete severance of Church and State; that public moneys shall not be used for the purpose of advancing any particular creed; and therefore that the public schools shall be nonsectarian and no public moneys appropriated for sectarian schools.

Theodore Roosevelt
If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.

Theodore Roosevelt
The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages, though it is apt to be also the most terrible and inhuman. The rude, fierce settler who drives the savage from the land lays all civilized mankind under a debt to him....[I]t is of incalculable importance that America, Australia, and Siberia should pass out of the hands of their red, black, and yellow aboriginal owners, and become the heritage of the dominant world races.

Theodore Roosevelt
Rough board shelves hold a number of books, without which some of the evenings would be long indeed.

Theodore Roosevelt
The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.

Theodore Roosevelt
I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character.

Theodore Roosevelt
War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong.

Theodore Roosevelt
Just as little can we afford to follow the doctrinaires of an impossible - and incidentally of a highly undesirable - social revolution which, in destroying individual rights - including property rights - and the family, would destroy the two chief agents in the advance of mankind, and the two chief reasons why either the advance or the preservation of mankind is worthwhile.

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