Quotes By Theodore Roosevelt

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

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

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

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

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

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

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

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

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

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

No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

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.

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

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

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

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

The American people abhor a vacuum.

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

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

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.

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