The American people are slow to wrath, but when their wrath is once kindled, it burns like a consuming fire.---
To bear the name of American is to bear the most honorable of all titles, and whoever does not so believe, has no business to bear the name at all.
---
We Americans have many great problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage, and the virtue to do them. But we must face the facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.
---
The steady arm of this nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice.
---
The eighth commandment says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ It does not say ’Thou shalt not steal from the rich,’ and it does not say ’Thou shalt not steal from the poor man.’ It reads simply and plainly 'Thou shalt not steal.'
No good whatever will come from that warped and mocked morality which denounces the misdeeds of men of wealth and forgets the misdeeds practiced at their expense. Which denounces bribery but blinds itself to blackmail, which foams with rage if a corporation secures favor by improper methods and merely leers with hideous mirth if the corporation itself is wronged.
The only public servant who can be trusted honestly to protect the rights of the public against the misdeeds of a corporation is that public man who will just as surely protect the corporation itself from wrongful aggression.
If a public man is willing to yield to popular clamour and do wrong to the men of wealth or to rich corporations, it may be set down as certain that if the opportunity comes he will secretly and furtively do wrong to the public in the interest of a corporation.
---
[writing to a surviving son, about the death of his brother in war...] Well, it is very dreadful, but, after all, he died as the heroes of old died; as brave and fearless men must die when a great cause calls. If our country did not contain such men it would not be our country.
---
Any man who has been honored by being made President of the United States is thereby forever after rendered the debtor of the American people, and is in honor bound throughout his life to remember this as his prime obligation, and in private life as much as in public life. So to carry himself that the American people may never have cause to feel regret that once they placed him at their head.
---
No brave and good man can properly shirk death, and no criminal who has earned death should be allowed to shirk it.
---
Before a man can discipline other men, he must demonstrate his ability to discipline himself. Before he may be allowed the command of commission, he must evidence command of character.
---
Weasel words from molly coddles will never do when the day demands prophetic clarity from greyhearts.
---
It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.
---
Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history. Far better it is 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 neither victory nor defeat.
---
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.
---
If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful.
---
I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.
---
Success - the real success - does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position.
---
Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.
---
It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.
---
There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.
---
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
---
I have always been fond of the West African proverb: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
