Top 500 Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

452. “Kings and such are just as funny as politicians.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

453. “Even in ordinary times there are very few of us who do not see the problems of life as through a glass, darkly; and when the glass is clouded by the murk of furious popular passion, the vision of the best and the bravest is dimmed.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

454. “Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

455. “The lunatic fringe in all reform movements.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

456. “I do not care a rap as to who gets credit for the work, provided the work is done.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

457. “The decisions of the courts on economic and social questions depend on their economic and social philosophy.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

458. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

459. “You cannot create prosperity by law. Sustained thrift, industry, application, intelligence, are the only things that ever do, or ever will, create prosperity. But you can very easily destroy prosperity by law.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

460. “While President, I have been President – emphatically.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

461. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

462. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

463. “I do not dislike but I certainly have no especial respect or admiration for and no trust in, the typical big moneyed men of my country. I do not regard them as furnishing sound opinion as respects either foreign or domestic business.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

464. “I wish to see the Bible study as much a matter of course in the secular colleges as in the seminary.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

465. “We can no more and no less afford to condone evil in the man of capital than evil in the man of no capital.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

466. “I am far from underestimating the importance of dividends, but I rank dividends below human character.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

467. “Speak softly, I’m getting my massage.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

468. “I violate no secret when I say that one of the greatest values in Masonry is that it affords an opportunity for men of all walks of life to meet on common ground where all men are equal and have one common interest.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

469. “What I have advocated is not wild radicalism. It is the highest and wisest kind of conservatism.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

470. “Massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

471. “I enter a most earnest plea that in our hurried and rather bustling life of today we do not lose the hold that our forefathers had on the Bible.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

472. “It is character that counts in a nation as in a man.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

473. “I have no business to feel downcast or querulous merely because when so much as been given me I have not had even more.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

474. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

475. “My hat is in the ring.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

476. “I don’t think any President ever enjoyed himself more than I did. Moreover, I don’t think any ex-President ever enjoyed himself more.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

477. “We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the cause of disaster.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

478. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

479. “Let us show, not merely in great crises, but in every day of life, qualities of practical intelligence, of hardihood and endurance, and above all, the power of devotion to a lofty ideal.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

480. “We shall make mistakes; and if we let these mistakes frighten us from our work we shall show ourselves weaklings.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

481. “Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

482. “I do not in the least object to a sport because it is rough.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

483. “Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and Ive got such a bully pulpit!”

— Theodore Roosevelt

484. “In the same way I have always regarded boxing as a first-class sport to encourage in the Young Men’s Christian Association.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

485. “Anything that encourages pauperism, anything that relaxes the manly fiber and lowers self-respect, is an unmixed evil.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

486. “The mass of the American people are most emphatically not in the deplorable condition of which you speak.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

487. “I believe that the officers, and, especially, the directors, of corporations should be held personally responsible when any corporation breaks the law.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

488. “If there is one thing for which we stand in this country, it is for complete religious freedom, and it is an emphatic negation of this right to cross-examine a man on his religion before being willing to support him for office.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

489. “The great virtue of my radicalism lies in the fact that I am perfectly ready, if necessary, to be radical on the conservative side.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

490. “It is, of course, the merest truism to say a party is of use only so far as it serves the nation.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

491. “The United States does not have a choice as to whether or not is will or will not play a great part in the world. Fate has made that choice for us. The only question is whether we will play the part well or badly.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

492. “After the war, and until the day of his death, his position on almost every public question was either mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

493. “To every man who faces life with real desire to do his part in everything, I appeal for a study of the Bible.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

494. “Never, never, you must never either of you remind a man at work on a political job that he may be President.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

495. “A President has a great chance; his position is almost that of a king and a prime minister rolled into one.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

496. “I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

497. “It is a great mistake to think that the extremist is a better man than the moderate. Usually the difference is not that he is morally stronger, but that he is intellectually weaker. He is not more virtuous. He is simply more foolish.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

498. “Nowadays the field naturalist-who is usually at all points superior to the mere closet naturalist-follows a profession as full of hazard and interest as that of the explorer or of the big-game hunter in the remote wilderness.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

499. “When we control business in the public interest we are also bound to encourage it in the public interest or it will be a bad thing for everybody and worst of all for those on whose behalf the control is nominally exercised.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

500. “Much of the usefulness of any career must lie in the impress that it makes upon, and the lessons that it teaches to, the generations that come after.”

— Theodore Roosevelt