In this post, we’ll read Theodore Roosevelt quotes, who was the 26th President of the United States.
Theodore Roosevelt (1858—1919), also called Teddy Roosevelt, was born in a wealthy family and had health issues since he was young but recovered by workouts and sports.
He got into politics as a New York State Assemblyman. During the Spanish-American War in 1898, he formed a volunteer cavalry regiment and gained national fame for his leadership during the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba. He was later elected Vice President of the United States in 1900 and became President in 1901 and served till 1909.
Teddy is remembered as one of the most dynamic and influential presidents in American history as his leadership style, often referred to as “Big Stick” diplomacy, was all about assertive and proactive governance.
Let’s read some of the best Theodore Roosevelt quotes on life, courage, hard work and more.
Best Theodore Roosevelt Quotes
1. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
2. “Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”
3. “If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
4. “Comparison is the thief of joy.”
5. “Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.”
6. “Nothing worth having comes easy.”
7. “No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.”
8. “The worst of all fears is the fear of living.”
9. “Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.”
10. “Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
11. “Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”
12. “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
13. “Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Life
1. “For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.”
2. “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty… I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.”
3. “We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.”
4. “The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”
5. “There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.”
6. “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.”
7. “Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
8. “Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.”
9. “In life, as in football, the principle to follow is to hit the line hard.”
10. “There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Work
1. “When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.
2. “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
3. “I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.”
4. “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.”
5. “I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.”
6. “Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.”
7. “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.”
8. “The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Success
1. “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
2. “The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
3. “Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
4. “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”
5. “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
6. “With self-discipline most anything is possible.”
7. “When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
8. “For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Courage
1. “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
2. “Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.”
3. “It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
4. “Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.”
5. “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”
6. “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.”
7. “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.”
8. “It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready.”
Inspirational Theodore Roosevelt Quotes
1. “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
2. “Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
3. “Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.”
4. “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.”
5. “Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.”
6. “Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.”
7. “Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”
8. “Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.”
9. “The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.”
10. “There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Arena
1. “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 them 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, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in 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 fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
2. “The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly; who know the great enthusiasums, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who at best know the triumph of high achievement; and who, at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Politics & Democracy
1. “The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”
2. “The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.”
3. “The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.”
4. “Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
5. “Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.”
6. “The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.”
7. “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.”
8. “When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.’”
9. “If given the choice between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness.”
10. “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official.”
11. “Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”
12. “A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
13. “Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Government
1. “The government is us; we are the government, you and I.”
2. “Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.”
3. “A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.”
4. “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.”
5. “No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.”
6. “I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.”
7. “Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
8. “It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.”
9. “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.”
10. “No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.”
11. “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 Quotes on Education
1. “To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
2. “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.”
3. “A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
4. “I am a part of everything that I have read.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on America
1. “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.”
2. “The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”
3. “We can have no ’50-50′ allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.”
4. “I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”
5. “To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.”
Theodore Roosevelt Quotes on Leadership
1. “People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
2. “Appraisals are where you get together with your team leader and agree what an outstanding member of the team you are, how much your contribution has been valued, what massive potential you have and, in recognition of all this, would you mind having your salary halved.”
3. “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 Quotes on Nature
1. “I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.”
2. “I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!”
3. “The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”
4. “Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.”
5. “Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
These Theodore Roosevelt quotes reflect his robust personality as he was a charismatic and influential leader known for his progressive policies, and multiple contributions to American society.
His face is immortalized on Mount Rushmore alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.
Which of these Theodore Roosevelt quotes is your favorite?
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