Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely […]

Peace is generally good in itself, but it is never the highest good unless it comes as the handmaid of righteousness; and it becomes a very evil thing if it serves merely as a mask for cowardice and sloth, or as an instrument to further the ends of despotism or anarchy. We despise and abhor […]

The Constitution was made for the people and not people for the Constitution.

Conservation and rural-life policies are really two sides of the same policy; and down at bottom this policy rests upon the fundamental law that neither man nor nation can prosper unless, in dealing with the present, thought is steadily taken for the future.

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.

I took the canal zone and let congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “present” or “not guilty.”

The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight. That he shall not be a mere passenger.

The line of cleavage between good and bad citizenship lies, not between the man of wealth who acts squarely by his fellow and the man who seeks each day’s wage by that day’s work, wronging no one… On the contrary, it separates the rich man who does well from the rich man who does ill, […]