Theodore Roosevelt
It's not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of the deeds could have done better.Collection: Strong
Over-sentimentality, over-softness, in fact washiness and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.Collection: People
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labour 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. A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.Collection: Spring
The greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married, and no other form of success or service, for either man or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternativeCollection: Men
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.Collection: Loyalty
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.Collection: Mean
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.Collection: True Friend
The effort to make financial or political profit out of the destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper, magazine, or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.Collection: Book
We are the heirs of the agesCollection: Age
It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong.Collection: Wicked
The name Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time.Collection: Country
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.Collection: War
A grove of giant redwood or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.Collection: Beautiful
Then get busy and find out how to do it.Collection: Inspirational
Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.Collection: Sports
It is character that counts in a nation as in a man.Collection: Character
Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.Collection: Inspirational
In life, as in football, the principle to follow is to hit the line hard.Collection: Life
There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship. You get it by applying the old, old rules of decent conduct, the rules in accordance with which decent men have had to shape their lives from the beginning .. fundamental precepts, put forth in the Bible and embodied consciously or unconsciously in the code of morals of every great and successful nation from antiquity to modern times.Collection: Successful
I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones.Collection: War
To have acted otherwise ... would have been the betrayal of the interests of the United States.Collection: Betrayal
No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: Home
We will send ships and Marines as soon as possible for the protection of American life and property.Collection: Marine
We here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.Collection: Hope
Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.Collection: Men
There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.Collection: Life
Constructive change offers the best method for avoiding destructive change.Collection: Method
Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.Collection: Wish
Now and then we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness, from animals that in the hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man: the coyotes wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the snorting and stamping of a deer.Collection: Animal
...let men express the intense admiration, which I share with all other Americans, of the record made by the Marines.Collection: Marine
Whatever it is, handle it so that your children's children will get the benefit of it.Collection: Children
There is no good reason why we should fear the future, but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.Collection: Purpose
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.Collection: Opportunity
The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.Collection: Environmental
We want men who will fix their eyes on the stars, but who will not forget that their feet must walk on the ground.Collection: Graduation
The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.Collection: Business
War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.Collection: War
We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage.Collection: Destiny
I do not intend that our natural resources shall be exploited by the few against the interests of the many.Collection: Environment
Nothing is gained by debate on non-debatable subjects.Collection: Debate
I have often been afraid, but I would not give in to it. I made myself act as though I was not afraid and gradually my fear disappeared.Collection: Giving
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.Collection: Beautiful
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.Collection: Men
No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load.Collection: Men
To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as a people, we must have trees.Collection: Garden
The only tyrannies from which men, women and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Inspirational