To sit home, read one's favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men's doing.
Catalog
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (/ˈroʊzəvɛlt/ ROH-zə-velt; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was an American statesman, author, explorer, soldier, naturalist, and reformer who served as the 26th President of the United States from 1901 to 1909. As a leader of the Republican Party during this time, he became a driving force for the Progressive Era in the United States in the early 20th century. Roosevelt was born a sickly child with debilitating asthma, but he successfully overcame his physical health problems by embracing a strenuous lifestyle. He integrated his exuberant personality, vast range of interests, and world-famous achievements into a "cowboy" persona defined by robust masculinity. Home-schooled, he began a lifelong naturalist avocation before attending Harvard College. His book, The Naval War of 1812 (1882), established his reputation as both a learned historian and as a popular writer. Upon entering politics, he became the leader of the reform faction of Republicans in New York's state legislature. Following the near-simultaneous deaths of his wife and mother, he escaped to a cattle ranch in the Dakotas. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under William McKinle
It is not the critic who counts....The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly...who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid…
It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself.
You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so. Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into…
Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism....We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not…
I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong.
We must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which…
A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage... For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the…
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.
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.
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'
The nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.
The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.
It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer. Of course, if the dream is not followed by action, then it is a bubble; it has merely served to divert the man from doing something.
A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy….