Top 500 Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

52. “We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

53. “The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

54. “Over-sentimentality, over-softness, in fact washiness and mushiness are the great dangers of this age and of this people. Unless we keep the barbarian virtues, gaining the civilized ones will be of little avail.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

55. “There is no effort without error or shortcoming.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

56. “Success, the real success, does not depend upon the position you hold but upon how you carry yourself in that position.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

57. “So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

58. “You can’t choose your potential, but you can choose to fulfill it.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

59. “This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

60. “With great victory comes great sacrifice.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

61. “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

62. “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

63. “Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

64. “The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

65. “Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to successful life.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

66. “Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?”

— Theodore Roosevelt

67. “If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

68. “Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

69. “We want men who will fix their eyes on the stars, but who will not forget that their feet must walk on the ground.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

70. “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

71. “Honesty first; then courage; then brains – and all are indispensable.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

72. “What such a man needs is not courage but nerve control, cool headedness. This he can get only by practice.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

73. “Each man must work for himself, and unless he so works, no outside help can avail him.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

74. “It’s not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of the deeds could have done better.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

75. “Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work must no longer be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

76. “I do. That is character!”

— Theodore Roosevelt

77. “No people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with the gratitude to the Giver of good who has blessed us.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

78. “Don’t foul, don’t flinch-hit the line hard.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

79. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

80. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

81. “Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

82. “The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

83. “Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

84. “The greatest historian should also be a great moralist. It is no proof of impartiality to treat wickedness and goodness on the same level.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

85. “It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks, and the greatest of all prizes are those connected with the home.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

86. “The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

87. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

88. “Perhaps there is no more important component of character than steadfast resolution.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

89. “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

90. “All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

91. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

92. “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

93. “Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

94. “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

95. “The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war...”

— Theodore Roosevelt

96. “Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

97. “It may be that ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’ in fifty one cases out of a hundred, but in the remaining forty nine it is quite as likely to be the voice of the devil, of, what is still worse, the voice of a fool.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

98. “From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

99. “There should be at least ten times the number of rifles in the country as there are now.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

100. “I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.”

— Theodore Roosevelt