One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called “weasel words.” When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a “weasel word” after another there is nothing left of the other.
—Theodore Roosevelt,
If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Now they’re going after statues of Theodore Roosevelt.
Yes, it was Franklin Roosevelt who locked American citizens in concentration camps because of their race. Teddy was the one who invited Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House.
This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.
—Theodore Roosevelt
It is both foolish and wicked to teach the average man who is not well off that some wrong or injustice has been done him, and that he should hope for redress elsewhere than in his own industry, honesty and intelligence.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.
—Theodore Roosevelt
The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.
—Theodore Roosevelt
No, not that Roosevelt. The first one, Teddy. Stephen Beale has an essay over at The American Conservative that asks Is Trump the New Teddy Roosevelt?
Roosevelt—a career politician who sought military service, an avid outdoorsman who hunted elephants and explored the Amazon, and an intellectually curious historian who dabbled in anthropology and zoology—might seem an unlikely model for Trump.
But in terms of policy, the parallels are legion.
Both TR and Trump can be categorized as unabashed nationalists willing to wield executive power in pursuit of their vision as the common good. Read the whole thing.
The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.
—Theodore Rooseveldt
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
—Theodore Roosevelt
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.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
—Theodore Roosevelt
The worst lesson that can be taught a man is to rely upon others and to whine over his sufferings.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them. … If they gradually grow to feel that the whole world is nothing but muck their power of usefulness is gone.
—Theodore Roosevelt
A typical vice of American politics—the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.
—Theodore Roosevelt
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
—Theodore Roosevelt
A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
—Theodore Roosevelt