Best Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness. We wish it because we think it is right and not because we are afraid.

Here is the task, and I have got to do it to the best of my ability; and that is all there is to it.

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 much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us.

MY fellow citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours...

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.

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

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

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.

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

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!

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

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.

The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything

The men with the muck-rake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.

Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another's keeping.

The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the senators do not know whether to answer present or not guilty.

The men and women who have the right ideals... are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.

It is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better. 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; who spends himself in a worthy cause. Who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home.

Aggressive fighting for the right is the greatest sport in the world.

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.

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

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.

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

The most successful politician is he who says what everybody is thinking most often and in the loudest voice.

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

A man must first care for his own household before he can be of use to the state. But no matter how well he cares for his household, he is not a good citizen unless he also takes thought of the state. In the same way, a great nation must think of its own internal affairs; and yet it cannot substantiate its claim to be a great nation unless it also thinks of its position in the world at large.

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

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

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

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

At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.

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

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.

Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations, and therefore our responsibility is heavy, to ourselves, to the world as it is to-day, and to the generations yet unborn.

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

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.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.