Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American, and nothing but an American.

The words of the Declaration of Independence, as given effect by Washington...are to be accepted as real, and not as empty phrases...that in very truth this is a government by the people themselves, that the Constitution is theirs, that the courts are theirs, that all the government agents and agencies are theirs... It is for the people themselves finally to decide all questions of public policy and to have their decision made effective...We here, in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world.

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.

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.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

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.

It either is or ought to be evident to everyone that business has to prosper before anyone can get any benefit from it.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words."

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

Freemasonry must stand upon the Rock of Truth, religion, political, social, and economic. Nothing is so worthy of its care as freedom in all its aspects. "Free" is the most vital part of Freemasonry. It means freedom of thought and expression, freedom of spiritual and religious ideals, freedom from oppression, freedom from ignorance, superstition, vice and bigotry, freedom to acquire and possess property, to go and come at pleasure, and to rise or fall according to will of ability.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

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.

The nation should be ruled by the Ten Commandments.

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone, but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching.

The best lesson that any people can learn is that there is no patent cure-all which will make the body politic perfect, and that any man who is able glibly to answer every question as to how to deal with the evils of the body politic is at best a foolish visionary and at worst an evil-minded quack.

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.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

When great nations fear to expand, shrink from expansion, it is because their greatness is coming to an end. Are we, still in the prime of our lusty youth, still at the beginning of our glorious manhood, to sit down among the outworn people, to take our place with the weak and the craven? A thousand times no!

All the resources we need are in the mind.

He [Lincoln] had mastered it {the Bible] absolutely...mastered it so that he became almost 'a man of one Book', who knew that Book and who instinctively put into practice what he had been taught therein.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

There is but one answer to terrorism and it is best delivered with a Winchester rifle.

The corporation that shrinks from the light" would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.

The immigrant must not be allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are required to perform the duties imposed upon them.

I keep my good health by having a very bad temper, kept under good control.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

A nation that still needs to distinguish between stealing an election, and stealing a new pair of shoes, is not completely civilized yet.

If there ever was a pursuit which stultified itself by its very conditions, it is the pursuit of pleasure as the all-sufficing end of life. Happiness cannot come to any man capable of enjoying true happiness unless it comes as the sequel to duty well and honestly done. To do that duty you need to have more than one trait. From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life's burdens.

We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages.

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.

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.

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.

It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot — but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.

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.

Believe you can do it and you are halfway there

The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

I always keep my weather eye on the opposition of my seventh house Moon to my first house Mars.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.