Theodore Roosevelt
475 quotes
Biography
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the 26th president of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. Previously serving for six months as vice president under William McKinley, Roosevelt became president after McKinley's assassination in 1901.
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
"The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life."
"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."
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed."
"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
"When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on"
"People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care"
"With self-discipline most anything is possible."
"To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
"Far better it 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 neither victory nor defeat."
"No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care"
"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."
"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."
"In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans."
"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. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure."
"Comparison is the thief of joy."
"By God, if you try anything like that, I'll kick you, I'll bite you, I'll kick you in the balls. I'll do anything to you — you'd better leave me alone."
"The light has gone out of my life."
"There is a curse on this house."
"No candid observer will deny that whatever of good there may be in our American civilization is the product of Christianity."
"The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian."
"I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indian is the dead Indian, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth."
"Of recent years... representative government all over the world has been threatened with a growing paralysis. Legislative bodies have tended more and more to become wholly inefficient for the purposes of legislation. The prime feature in causing this unhealthy growth has been the discovery by minorities that under the old rules of parliamentary procedure they could put a complete stop to all legislative action... If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority."
"We need, in the interest of the community at large, a rigid system of game laws rigidly enforced, and it is not only admissible, but one may almost say necessary, to establish, under the control of the State, great national forest reserves, which shall also be breeding grounds and nurseries for wild game; but I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system of large private game preserves, kept for the enjoyment of the very rich."
"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."