Theodore Roosevelt

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

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

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

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

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

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

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

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

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

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

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

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

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

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

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 railroad.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

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

The American people abhor a vacuum.

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.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

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

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

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

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.

Appraisals are where you get together with your team leader and agree what an outstanding member of the team you are, how much your contribution has been valued, what massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved.

The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.

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

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.

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

We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

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.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

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.

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.