Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided, but NEVER hit softly.

The nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.

There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value. Conservation means development as much as it does protection.

It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.

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.

Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss ... The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.

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

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can. It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune make for a finer, nobler type of manhood. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.

Black care rarely sits behind a rider whose pace is fast enough.

The government is us; WE are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us.

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.

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.

The greatest gift life has to offer is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing.

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.

There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.

Any man who tries to excite class hatred, sectional hate, hate of creeds, any kind of hatred in our community, though he may affect to do it in the interest of the class he is addressing, is in the long run with absolute certainly that class's own worst enemy.

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

I can do one of two things. I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year-old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.