Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

I am only an average man but by George I work harder at it than the average man.
Theodore Roosevelt
One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.
Theodore Roosevelt
Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can with what you have where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks.
Theodore Roosevelt
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
Theodore Roosevelt
I feel like a Bull Moose.
Theodore Roosevelt
I want to see you shoot the way you shout.
Theodore Roosevelt
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!
Theodore Roosevelt
Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.
Theodore Roosevelt
My hat's in the ring. The fight is one and I'm stripped to the buff.
Theodore Roosevelt
Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.
Theodore Roosevelt
My hat's in the ring. The fight is one and I'm stripped to the buff.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can with what you have where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can with what you have where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs and comes short again and again who knows the great enthusiasms the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
We demand that big business give people a square deal in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honesdy endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.
Theodore Roosevelt
The worst of all fears is the fear of living.
Theodore Roosevelt
I want to see you shoot the way you shout.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can with what you have where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
We cordially believe in the rights of property. We think that normally and in the long run the rights of humanity, coincide with the rights of property... But we feel that if in exceptional cases there is any conflict between the rights of property and the rights of man, then we must stand for the rights of man.
Theodore Roosevelt
Now and then I am asked as to ‘what books a statesman should read,’ and my answer is, poetry and novels – including short stories under the head of novels.
Theodore Roosevelt
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.
Theodore Roosevelt
The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.
Theodore Roosevelt
Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover’s besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls ‘the mad pride of intellectuality,’ taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.
Theodore Roosevelt
We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.
Theodore Roosevelt
The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.
Theodore Roosevelt
I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.
Theodore Roosevelt
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
Theodore Roosevelt
We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.
Theodore Roosevelt
I ended my statement to the colored soldiers by saying: "Now, I shall be very sorry to hurt you, and you don't know whether or not I will keep my word, but my men can tell you that I always do;" whereupon my cow-punchers, hunters, and miners solemnly nodded their heads and commented in chorus, exactly as if in a comic opera, "He always does; he always does!
Theodore Roosevelt
...the more I see the better satisfied I am that 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.
Theodore Roosevelt
Patriotism,” said Theodore Roosevelt, “means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. … Every man,” said President Roosevelt, “who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.
Theodore Roosevelt
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.
Theodore Roosevelt
Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
Theodore Roosevelt
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 person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.
Theodore Roosevelt
As regards the extraordinary prizes, the element of luck is the determining factor.
Theodore Roosevelt
The leaders of thought and of action grope theirway forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly,that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of valueonly as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes fromdevotion to loftier ideals.
Theodore Roosevelt
In the long run, success or failure will beconditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. 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.
Theodore Roosevelt
the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very muchhigher.
Theodore Roosevelt
There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake.
Theodore Roosevelt
It was a pleasure to deal with a man of high ideals, who scorned everything mean and base, and who possessed those robust and hardy qualities of body and mind, for the lack of which no merely negative virtue can ever atone.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.
Theodore Roosevelt
Fellow-feeling. . .is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other’s passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity.
Theodore Roosevelt
The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another.
Theodore Roosevelt
Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground
Theodore Roosevelt
It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.
Theodore Roosevelt
The existence of any method, standard, custom or practice is no reason for its continuance when a better is offered.
Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.
Theodore Roosevelt
No man is above the law, and no man is below it.
Theodore Roosevelt
You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch.
Theodore Roosevelt
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.
Theodore Roosevelt
Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.
Theodore Roosevelt