80+ Theodore Roosevelt Quotes to Inspire Leadership, Courage, and the Pursuit of Excellence
- October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919
- American
- Politician, military officer
- Served as the 26th President of the United States, promoted progressive reforms and environmental conservation policies, and supported the construction of the Panama Canal
- “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.”
- “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
- “There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.”
- “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.”
- “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.”
- “Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.”
- “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.”
- “Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”
- “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
- “Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.”
- “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 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!”
- “The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.”
- “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.”
- “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
- “I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.”
- “The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
- “People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
- “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.”
- “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
- “When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.”
- “Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”
- “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 American people abhor a vacuum.”
- “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.”
- “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.”
- “The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.”
- “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
- “The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.”
- “The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.”
- “I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.”
- “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.”
- “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.”
- “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.”
- “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
- “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”
- “A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
- “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
- “No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.”
- “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.”
- “Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.”
- “Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”
- “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.”
- “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
- “Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”
- “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
- “Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
- “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
- “Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.”
- “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
- “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.”
- “With self-discipline most anything is possible.”
- “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.”
- “Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.”
- “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.”
- “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
- “Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
- “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”
- “Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”
- “Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.”
- “The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”
- “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.”
- “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
- “I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.”
- “In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
- “Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.”
- “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.'”
- “No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.”
- “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”
- “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.”
- “Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”
- “It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.”
- “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
- “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.”
- “Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.”
- “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
- “I am a part of everything that I have read.”
- “The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”
- “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
- “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 justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.”
- “The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”