Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)

Quotes

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

• 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.

• War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong.

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

• Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

• 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.

• To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

• I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism.

• The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

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

• 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!

• Only those who are fit to live do not fear to die. And none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same great adventure.

• To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.

• A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished.

• 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.

• 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.

• The forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.

• This truth should be kept constantly in mind by every free people desiring to preserve the sanity and poise indispensable to the permanent success of self-government.

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

• The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.