Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready.
Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law. A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.
There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else
The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value.
The labor unions shall have a square deal, and the corporations shall have a square deal, and in addition, all private citizens shall have a square deal.
All constitutions, those of the States no less than that of the nation, are designed, and must be interpreted and administered so as to fit human rights.
In doing your work in the great world, it is a safe plan to follow a rule I once heard on the football field: Don't flinch, don't fall; hit the line hard.
A good shot must necessarily be a good man since the essence of good marksmanship is self-control and self-control is the essential quality of a good man.
My experience...convinced me that tea was better than brandy, and during the last six months in Afica I took no brandy, even when sick taking tea instead.
The mother is the one supreme asset of national life; she is more important by far than the successful statesman, or business man, or artist, or scientist.
If we would have our citizens contented and law-abiding, we must not sow the seeds of discontent in childhood by denying children their birthright of play.
If a man has a very decided character, has a strongly accentuated career, it is normally the case of course that he makes ardent friends and bitter enemies.
In this world the one thing supremely worth having is the opportunity to do well and worthily a piece of work of vital consequence to the welfare of mankind.
I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.
Materially we must strive to secure a broader economic opportunity for all men, so that each shall have a better chance to show the stuff of which he is made.
The biggest corporation, like the humblest private citizen, must be held to strict compliance with the will of the people as expressed in the fundamental law.
The corporation that shrinks from the light" would have anything to fear from government. About the welfare of such corporations we need not be oversensitive.
This broken country extends back from the river for many miles and has been called always be Indian, French voyager and American trappers alike, the Bad Lands.
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.
Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.
I feel most emphatically that we should not turn into shingles a tree which was old when the first Egyptian conqueror penetrated to the valley of the Euphrates.
All for each, and each for all, is a good motto; but only on condition that each works with might and main to so maintain himself as not to be a burden to others.
A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals.
The conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life.
No man who is not willing to bear arms and to fight for his rights can give a good reason why he should be entitled to the privilege of living in a free community.
We [must] hold the just balance and set ourselves as resolutely against improper corporate influence on the one hand as against demagogy and mob rule on the other.
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.
The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.
The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.
I shall ask you to be as quiet as possible. I don’t know whether you fully understand that I have just been shot — but it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose.
We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.
We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making.
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.
I believe that there should be a very much heavier progressive tax on very large incomes, a tax which should increase in a very marked fashion for the gigantic incomes.
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.
The dull, purblind folly of the very rich men, their greed and arrogance, and the corruption in business and politics, have tended to produce a very unhealthy condition.
Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people today, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander.
For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.
The longer I live the more I think of the quality of fortitude... men who fall, pick themselves up and stumble on, fall again, and are trying to get back up when they die.
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.
The highest form of success comes to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who, out of these, wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Do nothing to mar its grandeur ... keep it for your children, your children's children, and all who come after you, as the one great sight which every American should see.
A really great people, proud and high spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor.
Let us remember that, as much has been given us, much will be expected from us, and that true homage comes from the heart as well as from the lips, and shows itself in deeds.
I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in . . . a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, . . . increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
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 forces that tend for evil are great and terrible, but the forces of truth and love and courage and honesty and generosity and sympathy are also stronger than ever before.
It is an incalculable added pleasure to any one's sum of happiness if he or she grows to know, even slightly and imperfectly, how to read and enjoy the wonder-book of nature.
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.