33 Best Theodore Roosevelt Quotes And Sayings

“In any situation, the best thing you can do is the right thing; the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing; the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“We have no choice, we people of the United States, as to whether or not we shall play a great part in the world. That has been determined to us by fate, by the march of events. We have to play that part. All that we can decide is whether we shall play it well or ill.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“We of to-day are bound to try to tread in the footsteps of those great Americans who in the past have held a high ideal and have striven mightily through practical methods to realize that ideal. There must be many compromises; but we cannot compromise with dishonesty, with sin.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“There is a curse on this house.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters not how brilliant his capacity, it hardly matters how great his power of doing good service on certain lines may be.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“When we come to dealing with our social and industrial needs, remedies, rights and wrongs, a ton of oration is not worth an ounce of hard-headed, kindly common-sense.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Mere desire to do right can no more by itself make a good statesman than it can make a good general. Of course it is entirely unnecessary to say that nothing atones for the lack of this desire to do right.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“A coward who will take a blow without returning it is a contemptible creature; but, after all, he is hardly as contemptible as the boy who dares not stand up for what he deems right against the sneers of his companions who are themselves wrong.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Bullies do not make brave men; and boys or men of foul life cannot become good citizens, good Americans, until they change; and even after the change scars will be left on their souls.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The vast individual and corporate fortunes, the vast combinations of capital which have marked the development of our industrial system, create new conditions, and necessitate a change from the old attitude of state and the nation toward property.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“I am no advocate of senseless and excessive cramming in studies, but a boy should work, and should work hard, at his lessons -- in the first place, for the sake of what he will learn, and in the next place, for the sake of the effect upon his own character of resolutely settling down to learn it. Shiftlessness, slackness, indifference in studying, are almost certain to mean inability to get on ...

... in other walks of life.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“A man who has never gone to school may steal a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“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.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“In short, in life, as in a foot-ball game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!” – Theodore Roosevelt

“You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The fundamental law of healthy political life in this great republic is that each man shall in deed, and not merely in word, be treated, strictly on his worth as a man; that each shall do full justice to his fellow, and in return shall exact full justice from him.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“The light has gone out of my life.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“We cannot afford merely to sit down and deplore the evils of city life as inevitable, when cities are constantly growing, both absolutely and relatively. We must set ourselves vigorously about the task of improving them; and this task is now well begun.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“We need absolute honesty in public life; and we shall not get it until we remember that truth-telling must go hand in hand with it, and that it is quite as important not to tell an untruth about a decent man as it is to tell the truth about one who is not decent.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“When a man in public life pledges himself to a certain course of action he shall as a matter of course do what he said he would do, and shall not be held to have acted honorably if he does otherwise.” – 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

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

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

“Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“I am in this cause with my whole heart and soul. I believe that the Progressive movement is making life a little easier for all our people; a movement to try to take the burdens off the men and especially the women and children of this country. I am absorbed in the success of that movement.” – Theodore Roosevelt

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care” – Theodore Roosevelt