73 Quotes By Theodore Roosevelt


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

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

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt on best

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

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt on best

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
Theodore Roosevelt on best

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt on car

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
Theodore Roosevelt on courage

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
Theodore Roosevelt on courage

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.
Theodore Roosevelt on death

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.
Theodore Roosevelt on dreams

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
Theodore Roosevelt on education

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Theodore Roosevelt on education

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt on failure

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

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

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.
Theodore Roosevelt on good

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.
Theodore Roosevelt on good

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

The government is us we are the government, you and I.
Theodore Roosevelt on government