Theodore Roosevelt – The original guy to carry a big stick, have the bull pulpit, and be the modern man at the beginning of the last century.
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
Theodore Roosevelt
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
Theodore Roosevelt
A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
Theodore Roosevelt
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
Theodore Roosevelt
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
Theodore Roosevelt
Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
Theodore Roosevelt
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
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
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorius 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
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
Theodore Roosevelt
I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.
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
I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.
Theodore Roosevelt
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
Theodore Roosevelt
If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.
Theodore Roosevelt
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
Theodore Roosevelt
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
Theodore Roosevelt
Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
Theodore Roosevelt
Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
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.
Theodore Roosevelt
The government is us; we are the government, you and I.
Theodore Roosevelt
The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything. The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer. The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.
Theodore Roosevelt
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “Present” or “Not guilty.”
Theodore Roosevelt
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. With self-discipline most anything is possible.
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. 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.
Theodore Roosevelt