Quotes By Theodore Roosevelt

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

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

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

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

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

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.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 defeats.

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

Believe you can and you're halfway there.