Quotes

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.
-Theodore Roosevelt

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
-Theodore Roosevelt

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Speak softly and carry a big stick. You will go far.
-Theodore Roosevelt

A vote is like a rifle. Its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Believe you can and you're halfway there.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!
-Theodore Roosevelt

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general. If there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman. If Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
-Theodore Roosevelt

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
-Theodore Roosevelt

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Nine - tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
-Theodore Roosevelt

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.
-Theodore Roosevelt

The American people abhor a vacuum.
-Theodore Roosevelt

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeatss.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.
-Theodore Roosevelt

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting. But never hit soft.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.
-Theodore Roosevelt

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.
-Theodore Roosevelt

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.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
-Theodore Roosevelt

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
-Theodore Roosevelt

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.
-TheodoreRoosevelt

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
-Theodore Roosevelt

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.
-Theodore Roosevelt

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car. But if he has a university education, he may steal the whole ilroad.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I am a part of everything that I have read.
-Theodore Roosevelt

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.
-Theodore Roosevelt

In a moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
-Theodore Roosevelt

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.
-Theodore Roosevelt

No man is above the law and no man is below it: Nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.
-Theodore Roosevelt

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
-Theodore Roosevelt

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
-Theodore Roosevelt

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.
-Theodore Roosevelt