The quotations of

Theodore Roosevelt

26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909

1858–1919

75 quotes, most often on America, Politics and Success. Part of the U.S. Presidents collection.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.
- Family
The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.
- America
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.’
- Politics
Envy is as evil a thing as arrogance.
If an American is to amount to anything he must rely upon himself, and not upon the State; he must take pride in his own work, instead of sitting idle to envy the luck of others. He must face life with resolute courage, win victory if he can, and accept defeat if he must, without seeking to place on his fellow man a responsibility which is not theirs.
- Responsibility
Let individuals contribute as they desire; but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose, directly or indirectly.
- Politics
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.
- Decisions
The old parties are husks, with no real soul within either, divided on artificial lines, boss-ridden and privilege-controlled, each a jumble of incongruous elements, and neither daring to speak out wisely and fearlessly on what should be said on the vital issues of the day.
- Politics
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.
The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1910)
- Good & Evil
I believe that the next half century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism.
- Christianity
Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.
- Wisdom
There is quite enough sorrow and shame amd suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.
- Writing
A finer body of men has never been gathered by any nation than the men who have done the work of building the Panama Canal; the conditions under which they have lived and have done their work have been better than in any similar work ever undertaken in the tropics; they have all felt an eager pride in their work; and they have made not only America but the whole world their debtors by what they have accomplished.
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.
Seventh State of the Union (3 December 1907)

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