Theodore Roosevelt quotes

“Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“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

“The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

“When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“I am a part of everything that I have read.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

“The American people abhor a vacuum.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

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

— Theodore Roosevelt

“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