Top 500 Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

302. “Nine tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

303. “Envy is as evil a thing as arrogance.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

304. “We are the heirs of the ages.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

305. “The duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done, than for the insistence upon individual rights.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

306. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

307. “We fight in honourable fashion for the good of mankind; fearless of the future, unheeding of our individual fates, with unflinching hearts and undimmed eyes; we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

308. “The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

309. “Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose. Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity, and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

310. “Freedom is not a gift which can be enjoyed save by those shown themselves worthy of it.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

311. “Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

312. “No people ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

313. “Conservation of our resources is the fundamental question before this nation, and that our first and greatest task is to set our house in order and begin to live within our means.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

314. “I feel as fit as a bull moose.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

315. “It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

316. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

317. “A churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid downgrade.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

318. “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

319. “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 rests the future of the years.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

320. “Don’t spread patriotism too thin.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

321. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

322. “The wild life of today is not ours to do with as we please. The original stock was given to us in trust for the benefit both of the present and the future. We must render an accounting of this trust to those who come after us.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

323. “Unrestrained greed means the ruin of the great woods and the drying up of the sources of the rivers.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

324. “The object of government is the welfare of the people.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

325. “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

326. “The great man is always the man of mighty effort.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

327. “I never won anything without hard labor and the exercise of my best judgment.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

328. “There are dreadful moments when death comes very near those we love, even if for the time being it passes by. But life is a great adventure, and the worst of all fears is the fear of living.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

329. “The six great gifts of an Irish girl are beauty, soft voice, sweet speech, wisdom, needlework, and chastity.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

330. “It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

331. “The world wants the kind of men who do not shrink from temporary defeats in life; but come again and wrestle triumph from defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

332. “There are many occasions when the highest praise one can receive is the attack of some given scoundrel.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

333. “The hardest lessons to learn are those that are the most obvious.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

334. “If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

335. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

336. “No ability, no strength and force, no power of intellect or power of wealth, shall avail us, if we have not the root of right living in us.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

337. “Ruin looks us in the face if we judge a man by his position instead of judging him by his conduct in that position.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

338. “The reader, the booklover, must meet his own needs without paying too much attention to what his neighbors say those needs should be.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

339. “The only tyrannies from which men, women and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

340. “The modern naturalist must realize that in some of its branches his profession, while more than ever a science, has also become an art.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

341. “The little owls call to each other with tremulous, quavering voices throughout the livelong night, as they sit in the creaking trees.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

342. “I am rather more apt to read old books than new ones.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

343. “With soul of flame and temper of steel we must act as our coolest judgment bids us.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

344. “The country’s honor must be upheld at home and abroad.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

345. “I must be wanting to be President. Every young man does. But I won’t let myself think of it; I must not, because if I do, I will begin to work for it; I’ll be careful, calculating, cautious in word and act, and so – I’ll beat myself.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

346. “From the very beginning our people have markedly combined practical capacity for affairs with power of devotion to an ideal. The lack of either quality would have rendered the other of small value.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

347. “It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

348. “Under government ownership corruption can flourish just as rankly as under private ownership.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

349. “When we undertake the impossible, we often fail to do anything at all.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

350. “There is not one among us in whom a devil does not dwell; at some time, on some point, that devil masters each of us... It is not having been in the Dark House, but having left it, that counts.”

— Theodore Roosevelt