Theodore Roosevelt quotes:

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.

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.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

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

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

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

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

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

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

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.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!

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

Appraisals are where you get together with your team leader and agree what an outstanding member of the team you are, how much your contribution has been valued, what massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.

Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

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.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.

The one being abhorrent to the powers above the earth and under them is the hyphenated American

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

I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.

In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.

There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.

There is nothing more distressing ... than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition.

We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else

Americanism is a question of spirit, of conviction and purpose, not creed or birthplaces. The test of our worth is the service we render.

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

It is not the critic who counts...The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...

... the Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war, and the failure to act against Turkey is to condone it ... the failure to deal radically with the Turkish horror means that all talk of guaranteeing the future peace of the world is mischievous nonsense.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.

Love of peace is common among weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy persons; and on the other hand courage is found among many men of evil temper and bad character. Neither quality shall by itself avail. Justice among the nations of mankind, and the uplifting of humanity, can be brought about only by those strong and daring men who with wisdom love peace, but who love righteousness more than peace.

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

Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.

Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

I wish to see the Bible study as much a matter of course in the secular colleges as in the seminary.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

When I hear of the destruction of a species, I feel just as if all the works of some great writer have perished.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.

Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

Then get busy and find out how to do it.

Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity, and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world.

The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness - it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

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.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

Nowadays the field naturalist-who is usually at all points superior to the mere closet naturalist-follows a profession as full of hazard and interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game hunter in the remote wilderness.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with their majestic beauty all unmarred.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

The leader works in the open and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

It is not the critic who counts

The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasums, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at best know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Willful sterility is, from the standpoint of the nation, from the standpoint of the human race, the one sin for which the penalty is national death, race death; a sin for which there is no atonement. No man, no woman, can shirk the primary duties of life, whether for love of ease and pleasure, or for any other cause, and retain his or her self-respect.

No man can do both effective and decent work in public life unless he is a practical politician on the one hand, and a sturdy believer in Sunday-school politics on the other. He must always strive manfully for the best, and yet, like Abraham Lincoln, must often resign himself to accept the best possible.

We are consuming our forests three times faster than they are being reproduced. Some of the richest timber lands of this continent have already been destroyed, and not replaced, and other vast areas are on the verge of destruction. Yet forests, unlike mines, can be so handled as to yield the best results of use, without exhaustion, just like grain fields.

Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind

We [must] hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

McKinley shows all the background of a chocolate eclair.

McKinley has no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.

The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed.

I stand for the square deal. I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent, for real estate is the basis of wealth.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

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.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

The one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight... It should be the growing nation with a future which takes the long look ahead.

Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed.

Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.

There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live - I have no use for the sour-faced man - and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.