1. People
    2.  › 
  2. Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt photo

Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Total quotes: 43
“Greatness comes only to those who seek not how to avoid obstacles but how to overcome them.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's Words of Wit and Wisdom
Tagged: Greatness
“I don’t for a moment believe that we can turn back the wheels of progress.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Progress
“We need to keep our faces steadily toward the sun. You can change the simile, to keep our eyes to the stars, but remember that our feet have got to be on the ground.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: simile, Stars, The Sun, Wisdom
“This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in if it is not a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Nations, Tolerance
“Don't hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Violence, Knockout
“A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy….”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Democracy, Progressive
“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations
Tagged: character, individuals, Nations
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Higher Life Of American Cities
Tagged: Critics, Newspapers, Journalists, Evil
“When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Happiness and Virtue Beyond East and West
Tagged: Drive, motivation, Positivity
“No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Harvard Advocate
Tagged: Bravery, Higher Cause, Risk
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Obstacles, manhood, Defeat, victory, Overcoming
“[When told he might be in a wheelchair for life] All right! I can work with that too!”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
Tagged: Persevere
“If you haven't got it in you to feel most proud of the times when you work, I think very little of you.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Life
“It is a good thing to be a good half-back but it is a mighty bad thing if at forty all you can say of a man is that he was a good half-back.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Tagged: Life
“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Opinion | Immigration Enriches You and Me
Tagged: Immigrants, Immigration, english, Monolingualism, Nativism
“Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Bully Pulpit
Tagged: Discipline, Soul
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic
Tagged: Success, Materialism
“Delivering sharp, sudden blows against business, then following with conciliatory speeches.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.
Tagged: strategy
“There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease, whose name is worth remembering.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
Tagged: Thinking Of Others
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Nations, Resources, assets, Natural Resources
“The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Politics, Decency, Practicality
“The man behind the rifle is more important than the rifle itself.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Compilation of the Messages and Papers of Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: strategy
“A foolish optimist is only less noxious that an utter pessimist.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Law of Civilization and Decay
Tagged: Optimism, Pessimism, Fools
“The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Honor, posterity, Children
“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Safire's Political Dictionary
Tagged: Reform, Mass Movements, Lunatic Fringe
“Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Wisdom, Timeliness, Timing
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Nations, Dreamers, Action
“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.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Consent, Hope, Opportunity, Race, Tolerance
“Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Wisdom of Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Worth, Effort, Pain, Difficulty, difficult, hard, Life, Living, Envy, Human Being, human, strive
“He means well, but he means well feebly.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, H. W. Brands, T.R.: The Last Romantic
Tagged: Life
“It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism
Tagged: Crises
“Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: America, Nations, strength, Youth, World Powers
“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 against wealth.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Corporations, Capitalism, Public Good, Wealth, Misconduct, Industrialism
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, 365 Best Inspirational Quotes: Daily Motivation For Your Best Year Ever:
Tagged: Postive, Motivational
“Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life
Tagged: Triumph, glory, victory, Defeat
“The first duty in this world is for a man to pay his own way.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, The Works of Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Life
“Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as be seen as a people with such responsibilities.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, March 4, 1905: Inaugural Address | Miller Center
Tagged: Responsibility, Nations
“I would not for one moment be understood as objecting to criticism or failing to appreciate the importance….But 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, and not by the man who talks about how they ought or ought not to be done.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, In the Words of Theodore Roosevelt
Tagged: Criticism, Doers
“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 souls who know neither victory or defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Citizenship in a Republic
Tagged: Critics, Action, Sweat and Blood, Fallure, Success, victory, Timid
“One day his father said to him, 'Theodore, you have the brain but you haven't got the body. I'm giving you the tools to make your body. It's going to be hard drudgery and I want to know whether you think you have the determination to go through with it.'

With a flash of those white teeth, Theodore said 'I'll make my body.'”
— Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life
Tagged: Prepare
loading next page...