The United States does not have a choice as to whether or not is will or will not play a great part in the world. Fate has made that choice for us. The only question is whether we will play the part well or badly.

We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital.

A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones.

The important thing is this: that, under such government recognition as we may give to that which is beneficent and wholesome in large business organizations, we shall be most vigilant never to allow them to crystallize into a condition which shall make private initiative difficult. It is of the utmost importance that in the future we shall keep the broad path of opportunity just as open and easy for our children as it was for our fathers during the period which has been the glory of America's industrial history.

To have acted otherwise ... would have been the betrayal of the interests of the United States.