Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (163 Quotes)

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!

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

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

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.

Theodore Roosevelt, impatient with the excesses of 'purely sentimental historians,' authored his own stirring vindication of America's relations with the Indians Looked at from the standpoint of the ultimate result, there was little real difference to th.

I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

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

Death is always and under all circumtances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

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.

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

There is a homely adage which runs, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick you will go far.' If the American nation will speak softly and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the Lord.

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

The great lawyer who employs his talent and his learning in the highly emunerative task of enabling a very wealthy client to override or circumvent the law is doing all that in him lies to encourage the growth in the country of a spirit of dumb anger against all laws and of disbelief in their efficacy.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.

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

What I am to be, I am becoming.

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

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.

My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff.

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

After the war, and until the day of his death, his position on almost every public question was either mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both

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

The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything. Do not be afraid to make mistakes providing you do not make the same one twice.

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

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

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

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.

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.

The man who holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare.

I worship you so that it seems almost desecration to touch you.

Hyphenated Americans. Metropolitan Magazine.

Malefactors of great wealth.

I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character.

We demand that big business give people a square deal in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right, he shall himself he given a square deal.

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by sweat and blood who strives valiantly who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat.

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

We stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob. 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. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with 'the money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

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

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.

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