Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Every special interest is entitled to justice - full, fair, and complete... but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection. A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

This broken country extends back from the river for many miles and has been called always be Indian, French voyager and American trappers alike, the Bad Lands.

What counts in a man or in a nation is not what the man or the nation can do, but what he or it actually does.

If I have erred, I err in company with Abraham Lincoln.

The only trouble with the movement for the preservation of our forests is that it has not gone nearly far enough, and was not begun soon enough.

Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.

Oh, if only I could be President and Congress, too, just for ten minutes.

The duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done, than for the insistence upon individual rights.

I enter a most earnest plea that in our hurried and rather bustling life of today we do not lose the hold that our forefathers had on the Bible.

The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers.

I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.

When liberty becomes license, some form of one-man power is not far distant.

Rough board shelves hold a number of books, without which some of the evenings would be long indeed.

The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.

All that the law can do is to shape things so that no injustice shall be done by one to the other, and that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff that is in him.

I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.

To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.

The bulk of government is not legislation but administration.

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone, but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching.

Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.

I never keep boys waiting. It's a hard trial for a boy to wait.

A leader is an average, everyday person who is highly motivated.

A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals.

It's not the critic that counts.

While my interest in natural history has added very little to my sum of achievement, it has added immeasurably to my sum of enjoyment in life.

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A small politician, of low capacity and mean surroundings, proud to act as the servile tool of men worse than himself but also stronger and abler.

Much of the usefulness of any career must lie in the impress that it makes upon, and the lessons that it teaches to, the generations that come after.

All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.

The sons of all of us will pay in the future if we of the present do not do justice in the present.

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.

I hate a man who skins the land.

We want the active and zealous help of every man far-sighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests.

No triumph of peace can equal the armed triumph of war.

We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.

We sincerely and earnestly believe in peace; but if peace and justice conflict, we scorn the man who would not stand for justice though the whole world came in arms against him.

It's not having been in the Dark House, but having left it that counts.

From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.

A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill

I don't think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don't think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.

All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.

I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.

No other President ever enjoyed the Presidency as I did.

If elected, I shall see to it that every man has a square deal, no less and no more.

Kings and such are just as funny as politicians.

McKinley shows all the background of a chocolate eclair.

I like to see Quentin (Roosevelt) practicing baseball. It gives me hope that one of my boys will not take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the national game.

We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital.