Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very muchhigher.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

As regards the extraordinary prizes, the element of luck is the determining factor.

~ 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

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.

~ 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

...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

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

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 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

It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.

~ 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 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

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

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

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

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

The worst of all fears is the fear of living.

~ 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

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

~ 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

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

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.

~ Theodore Roosevelt