Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Believe you can and you're halfway there.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

As regards the extraordinary prizes, the element of luck is the determining factor.

I read them (articles TR wrote on his honeymoon) all over to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me.

I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.

Every book of tactics in the regiment was in use from morning until night, and the officers and non-commissioned officers were always studying the problems presented at the schools.

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground

Most of the men had simple souls. They could relate facts, but they said very little about what they dimly felt.

We did everything possible to keep up the spirits of the men, but it was exceedingly difficult because there was nothing for them to do.

Wall Street billionaires are predicting that Roosevelt-style railroad rate regulation will sooner or later bring about financial catastrophe. [ca. 1906]

No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care

the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very muchhigher.

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.

Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.

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.

To educate a person in the mind but not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

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

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.

Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks.

I have only a second rate brain, but I think I have a capacity for action.

Do what you can with what you have where you are.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

One journalist complemented another that his article on a dispute, "had made both sides see themselves as they are.

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.

No man needs sympathy because he has to work, because he has a burden to carry. Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

My hat's in the ring. The fight is one and I'm stripped to the buff.

It was not only that he was a great man, but, oh, there was such fun in being led by him.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

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

People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.

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

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

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

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

I am only an average man but by George I work harder at it than the average man.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

That was a good mark in Latin, and I am pleased with your steady improvement in it.