Top 500 Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “When men fear work or fear righteous war, when women fear motherhood, they tremble on the brink of doom; and well it is that they should vanish from the earth, where they are fit subjects for the scorn of all men and women who are themselves strong and brave and high-minded.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

352. “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but 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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

353. “Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation – they are the normal endings of the stately creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

354. “The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled it burns like a consuming flame.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

355. “I want to see you shoot the way you shout.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

356. “I want to see you game, boys, I want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

357. “In a crisis, the man worth his salt is the man who meets the needs of the situation in whatever way is necessary.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

358. “My hat’s in the ring. The fight is on and I’m stripped to the buff.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

359. “We have room but for one Language here and that is the English Language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans of American nationality and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

360. “The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

361. “A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

362. “I wish very much that the wrong people could be prevented entirely from breeding.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

363. “There are some timid souls that will never know victory nor defeat.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

364. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

365. “To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

366. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

367. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

368. “Nothing could be more lonely and nothing more beautiful than the view at nightfall across the prairies to these huge hill masses, when the lengthening shadows had at last merged into one and the faint after-glow of the red sunset filled the west.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

369. “The greatest privilege and greatest duty for any man is to be happily married, and no other form of success or service, for either man or woman, can be wisely accepted as a substitute or alternative.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

370. “The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

371. “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

372. “Practical efficiency is common, and lofty idealism not uncommon; it is the combination which is necessary, and the combination is rare.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

373. “Everyone loves justice in the affairs of another.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

374. “There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

375. “Silent strength is the quality of all good men and most mummies.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

376. “We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

377. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

378. “There are those who believe that a new modernity demands a new morality. What they fail to consider is the harsh reality that there is no such thing as a new morality. There is only one morality. All else is immorality.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

379. “For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

380. “In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

381. “A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

382. “We should not forget that it will be just as important to our descendants to be prosperous in their time as it is to us to be prosperous in our time.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

383. “There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

384. “I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of – a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of – the history of the world of the past.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

385. “Give the brethren a chance to do something, anything, no matter how small or unimportant. A brother convinced that he is helpful is enthusiastic.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

386. “We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

387. “We have room in this country for but one flag, the Stars and Stripes!”

— Theodore Roosevelt

388. “The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

389. “The performance of duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life worth while.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

390. “In popular government results worth while can only be achieved by men who combine worthy ideals with practical good sense.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

391. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

392. “Those who advocate total lack of regulation, those who advocate lawlessness in the business world, themselves give the strongest impulse to what I believe would be the deadening movement toward unadulterated state socialism.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

393. “There is more fine abstract design in Navajo rugs than in all these modern paintings.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

394. “I believe in corporations. They are indispensable instruments of our modern civilization. But I believe they should be so regulated that they shall act for the interests of the community as a whole.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

395. “Hardness of heart is a dreadful quality, but it is doubtful whether in the long run it works more damage than softness of head.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

396. “We do not admire a man of timid peace.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

397. “Much of the discussion about socialism and individualism is entirely pointless, because of failure to agree on terminology.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

398. “War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

399. “Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

400. “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.”

— Theodore Roosevelt