Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.

I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.

I grew into manhood thoroughly imbued with the feeling that a man must be respected for what he made of himself.

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the Captain of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine. In action he was a perfect gamecock.

The President and the Congress are all very well in their way. They can say what they think they think, but it rests with the Supreme Court to decide what they have really thought.

Great thought speak only to the thoughtful mind ,but great actions speak to all mankind.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or how the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

If a nation shows that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the United States.

Far better is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

No man in public position can, under penalty of forfeiting the right to the respect of those whose regard he most values, fail as the opportunity comes to do all that in him lies for peace.

Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.

Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they said very little about what they dimly felt.

in the writing of good English is indispensable to any learned man who expects to make his learning count for what it ought to count in the effect on his fellow men.

No amount of charity in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them.

Again, it was proposed that we should go up the mountains and make our camps there.

Get action. Do things; be sane; don't fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.

Believe you can and you're halfway there".

When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded.

Far-seeing patriots should turn scornfully from men who seek power on a platform which with exquisite nicety combines silly inability to understand the national needs and dishonest insintcerity in promising conflicting and impossible remedies.

With soul of flame and temper of steel we must act as our coolest judgment bids us.

The power of the journalist is great, but he is entitled neither to respect nor admiration because of that power unless it is used aright.

There must be absolute religious liberty, for tyranny and intolerance are as abhorrent in matters intellectual and spiritual as in matters political and material; and more and more we must all realize that conduct is of infinitely greater importance than dogma.

The majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former

I then held, and now hold, the belief that a man's first duty is to pull his own weight and to take care of those dependent upon him; and I then believed, and now believe, that the greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married, and that no other form of success or service, for either man or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative.