June 1, 2010

"Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above is character."

- The Outlook, March 31, 1900

May 25, 2010

"It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it."

- Dickinson, Dakota Territory, July 4, 1886

May 18, 2010

"It is a dredful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office."

-San Francisco, California, May 14, 1903

May 11, 2010

 "Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rest the future of the years."

- The Great Adventure, 1918

May 4, 2010

"Probably the best test of the true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country."

- Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

April 27, 2010

"I have mighty little use for ethics that are applied with such inefficiency that no good results come."

- Harvard University, December 14, 1910

April 20, 2010

"There is a certain tendency among excellent people to believe that everything can be accomplished by law; that when there is any wrong, it is due to what they call the state of society, and that there is immediate need for radical and sweeping changes in the social system."

- Kansas City, Missouri, May 1, 1903

April 13, 2010

"Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier."

- Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897

April 6, 2010

"I like to see Quentin practicing baseball. It gives me hope that one of my boys will not take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the national game."

- Source 1, 2.

March 30, 2010

"A man whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do manual labor."

- An Autobiography, 1913.

March 23, 2010

"War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong."

- Oyster Bay, New York - July 4, 1906.

March 16, 2010

"There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility."

- Abilene, Kansas, May 2, 1903.

March 9, 2010

"Whenever there is tyranny by the majority I shall certainly fight it."

- St. Louis, Missouri, March 28, 1912.

March 2, 2010

"More and more I have grown to have a horror of the reformer who is half charlatan and half fanatic, and ruins his own cause by overstatement."

-Oyster Bay, New York - July 20, 1901.

February 23, 2010

"Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience."

-An Autobiography, 1913.

February 16, 2010

"Lincoln is my hero. He was a man of the people who always felt with and for the people, but who had not the slightest touch of the demagogue in him."

-Letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, March 9, 1905.

February 9, 2010

"There are few moments more pleasant than the home-coming, when, in the gathering darkness, after crossing the last chain of ice-covered buttes, or after coming round the last turn in the wind-swept valley, we see, through the leafless trees, or across the frozen river, the red gleam of the firelight as it shines through the ranch windows and flickers over the trunks of the cottonwoods outside, warming a man's blood by the mere hint of the warmth awaiting him within."

-Ranch Life in the Hunting Trail, 1896

February 2, 2010

"To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who 'hits the line hard.' "
-Sagamore Hill, Oyster Bay, New York, October 1897

January 26, 2010

"The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled, it burns like a consuming flame."
-First annual address to Congress, December 3, 1901

January 20, 2010

"It is more difficult to preserve the fruits of victory than to
 win the victory."
-McClure's Magazine, October 1901

January 12, 2010

"No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character."
-An Autobiography, 1913

January 5, 2010

"To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy."
-An Autobiography, 1913

December 22, 2009

"I wonder whether there ever can come in life a thrill of greater exaltation and rapture than that which comes to one between the ages of say six and fourteen, when the library door is thrown open and you walk in to see all the gifts, like a materialized fairyland, arrayed on your special table?"

-Letter to Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, December 26, 1903

December 15, 2009

"No student of American history needs to be reminded that the Constitution itself is a bundle of compromises."

-Atlantic Monthly, August 1894

December 8, 2009

"If the business world loses its head, it loses what
legislation cannot supply."

-December 3, 1901, First Annual Message to Congress

December 1, 2009

"Do not get into a fight if you can possibly avoid it.  If you get in, see it through.  Don't hit if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit soft.  Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep."

-January 24, 1918 National Press Club, Washington, DC.