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If I were asked to name the three influences which I thought were the most dangerous to the perpetuity of American institutions, I should name corruption, in business and politics
alike; lawless violence; and mendacity, especially used in connection with slander. We Americans are children of the crucible.
Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth,
sincerity and hardihood-the virtues that made America. 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.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Americanism is a question of principle, of purpose, of Idealism, of Character; it is not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
- Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography
The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the
servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man's making shall be the servant not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control
the mighty commercial forces which they themselves have called into being.
- Theodore Roosevelt
It is essential that there should be organizations of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital
organizes and therefore labor must organize.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The relations of capital and labor, and especially of organized capital and organized labor, to each other and to the public at large, come
second in importance only to the intimate questions of family life.
- Theodore Roosevelt
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
- Theodore Roosevelt
There
can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put and end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.
- Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism 1910
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.
- Theodore Roosevelt
I took the Canal Zone and let Congress
debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also.
- Theodore Roosevelt, Speech, Berkeley, California, March 23, 1911
The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what
he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.
- Theodore Roosevelt
This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.
- Theodore Roosevelt
No man can be a good citizen
unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so that after his day's work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of
the community. We keep countless men from being good citizens by the conditions of life by which we surround them.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em,
"Certainly I can!" Then get busy and find out how to do it.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent, experimentation. It is
common sense to take a method and try it, if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
- Theodore Roosevelt
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is
knowing how to get along with people.
- Theodore Roosevelt
It is not the critic who counts, nor the person who points out how the strong person stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done better.
The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena; whose face is actually marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes short again and again, who knows great enthusiasm
and great devotions, whose life is spent in a worthy cause; who, at best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and at worst, if failure wins out, it at least wins with greatness, so that this person's
place shall never be with those timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
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