Quotes by Theodore Roosevelt
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There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake.

Certain rich men, whose lives are evil and corrupt, are the representatives of predatory wealth accumulated by all forms of inequity, from the oppression of wage workers to unfair methods of crushing out competition.

When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.

These international bankers and Rockefeller Standard Oil interests control the majority of newspapers and the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of public office officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government.

If we put corrupt men in public office and sneeringly acquiesce in their corruptions, then we are wrong ourselves.

Nowhere, not at sea, does a man feel more lonely than when riding over the far-reaching, seemingly never-ending plains.

There should be at least ten times the number of rifles in the country as there are now.

Is it any wonder that I loved my regiment?

Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and Ive got such a bully pulpit!

The problems differ from generation to generation, but the qualities needed to solve them remain unchanged from world's end to world's end.

The corporation that shrinks from the light would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.

No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character.

Then get busy and find out how to do it.

To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.

Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.

Rarely has any people enjoyed greater prosperity than we are now enjoying. For this we render heartfelt and solemn thanks to the Giver of Good; and we seek to praise Him -not by words only -but by deeds, by the way in which we do our duty to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.

Short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work must no longer be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.

There is need of a sound body, and even more need of a sound mind. But above mind and above body stands character-the sum of those qualities which we mean when we speak of a man's force and courage, of his good faith and sense of honor.

It is never worth while to absolutely exhaust one's self or to take big chances unless for an adequate object.

It is well indeed for out land that we of this generation have learned to think nationally.

A healthy state can exist only when the men and women who make it up lead clean, vigorous, healthy lives; when the children are so trained that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk.

Those who oppose all reform will do well to remember that ruin in its worst form is inevitable if our national life brings us nothing better than swollen fortunes for the few and the triumph in both politics and business of a sordid and selfish materialism.

If we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at the hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

Every man owes a part of his time and money to the business or industry in which he is engaged. No man has the moral right to withhold his support from an organization that is striving to improve conditions within his sphere.

A typical vice of American politics the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called ''weasel words.'' When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a ''weasel word'' after another there is nothing left of the other.

To announce there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand with the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president.

From reading of the people I admired -- ranging from the soldiers of Valley Forge and Morgan's riflemen to my Southern forefathers and kinfolk -- I felt a great admiration for men who were fearless and who could hold their own in the world. And I had a great desire to be like them.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above is character.

You, the sons of the pioneers, if you are true to your ancestry, must make your lives as worthy as they made theirs. They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease. They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.

The performance of duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life worth while.

It is, of course, the merest truism to say a party is of use only so far as it serves the nation.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.

Now and then we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness, from animals that in the hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man: the coyotes wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the snorting and stamping of a deer.

Never, never, you must never either of you remind a man at work on a political job that he may be President.

I wish that all Americans would realize that American politics is world politics.

We want the active and zealous help of every man far-sighted enough to realize the importance from the standpoint of the nation's welfare in the future of preserving the forests.

If, in any individual, university training produces a taste for refined idleness, a distaste for sustained effort, a barren intellectual arrogance, or a sense of superfluous aloofness from the world of real men who do the world's real work, then it has harmed that individual.

Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether in the long run it works more damage than softness of head.

It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.

I am a strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance, and conviction; but it is a mere matter of common sense to recognize that the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.

The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.

I'm as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

You would be much amused with the animals round the ranch.

The men and women who have the right ideals ... are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.

That was a good mark in Latin, and I am pleased with your steady improvement in it.

Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west.

My experience...convinced me that tea was better than brandy, and during the last six months in Afica I took no brandy, even when sick taking tea instead.

Give a man a soccer ball, he plays for a moment. Teach a man to play soccer, he plays for a life time.

Don't spread patriotism too thin.

A good shot must necessarily be a good man since the essence of good marksmanship is self-control and self-control is the essential quality of a good man.

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.

Black care rarely sits behind the rider whose pace is fast enough.

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

We fight in honourable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future, unheeding of our individual fates, with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.

My hat's in the ring. The fight is on and I'm stripped to the buff.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not the great occasion, you don't get the great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in times of peace, no one would know his name now.

There is no moral difference between gambling at cards or in lotteries or on the race track and gambling in the stock market. One method is just pernicious to the body politic as the other kind.

The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.

Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft!

The extermination of the buffalo has been a veritable tragedy of the animal world.

The wildlife and its habitat cannot speak, so we must and we will.

The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.

Nothing worth having was ever achieved without effort.

No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Knowing what's right doesn't mean much unless you do what's right.

Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.

The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.

No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Books are the ammunition of life.

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.

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.

I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota.

We must hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune-make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.