Briefly summarizing the life of Theodore Roosevelt is like trying to whistle the entirety of Madama Butterfly in three bars. To truly appreciate so godlike a man, we advise you read the Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy by Edmund Morris. So complete was Roosevelt’s life that he doesn’t even become president until Morris’s second book.
Teddy, as he was affectionately called (although seldom to his face) was the 26th president of the United States, and considered by more than a few to have been the greatest. He was also a statesman, writer, conservationist, naturalist, hunter, ornithologist, taxidermist, cowboy, and war veteran – he was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor in 2001.
Roosevelt was born in 1858 to an affluent family in New York City. Racked by asthma throughout his childhood, he spent a enormous amount of time reading about a world which he wished to adventure throughout. Prodigious exercise improved Roosevelt’s health to the point where he could one day keep pace with even the most rugged outdoorsmen.
Roosevelt’s father died while he was attending Harvard. Although his inheritance meant he would never have to work, he nevertheless set out to become a politician. A series of setbacks including the simultaneous yet unrelated deaths of his wife and mother drove Roosevelt to seek solace as a rancher in the Dakota Territory. There he defied anyone who tried to treat him like some wet behind the ears poseur.
Having healed spiritually on the frontier, Roosevelt remarried and returned to public life. As New York City police commissioner he struck fear into the hearts of cops who might sleep on their beats – let alone fail to uphold the law. As Assistant Secretary of the Navy for William McKinley, Roosevelt pushed to improve the country’s then infant Navy. Never content to take a back seat to things, Roosevelt led the Rough Riders to victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill. He easily became governor of New York on his return, followed by a brief vice presidency. McKinley’s assassination in 1901 created our youngest president in history.
As president Roosevelt aggressively regulated trusts, arbitrated a resolution to the crippling coal strike of 1902, pushed Congress to pass the Pure Food and Drug Act, established the United States Forest Service, began construction of the Panama Canal, and defused the Venezuelan crisis of 1902-1903. Upon the completion of his second term Roosevelt set out on safari, during which he stocked the American Museum of Natural History with many fine specimens which you can see today. It is a wonder there are any animals left in Africa.
Roosevelt unsuccessfully ran for a third term in office in 1912, although he he did succeed where McKinley couldn’t by surviving his own assassination attempt. His poor eyesight and loquacity teamed up to save him, as the bullet was slowed by both his eyeglass case and folded 50 page speech. Following his defeat Roosevelt went on expedition to South America, which unfortunately exposed him to tropical diseases that would exacerbate his already poor respiratory health. He died in 1919. You can see him today in South Dakota, just to the right of Thomas Jefferson.
Theodore Roosevelt Famous Quotes
“Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Life is a great adventure … accept it in such a spirit.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“To sit home, read one’s favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective. It is what evil men count upon the good men’s doing.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“A soft, easy life is not worth living, if it impairs the fibre of brain and heart and muscle. We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage… For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Conservation Quotes
“This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“The time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted. We must ask what will happen when the soils shall have been still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields, and obstructing navigation.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“There is a delight in the hardy life of the open. There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm. The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value. Conservation means development as much as it does protection.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.” – Teddy Roosevelt
”We have a right to expect that the best trained, the best educated men on the Pacific slope, the Rocky Mountains, and great plains States will take the lead in the preservation and right use of forests, in securing the right use of waters, and in seeing that our land policy is not twisted from its original purpose, but is perpetuated by amendment, by change when such change is necessary in the life of that purpose, the purpose being to turn the public domain into farms each to be the property of the man who actually tills it and makes his home in it.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majesty all unmarred.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Quotes About Nature
“The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“A grove of giant redwood or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral.” – Teddy Roosevelt
”I do not believe that any man can adequately appreciate the world of to-day unless he has some knowledge of — a little more than a slight knowledge, some feeling for and of — the history of the world of the past.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Hunting Quotes
“In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild life, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“No, I’m not a good shot, but I shoot often.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Patriotism Quotes
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Quotes on Leadership
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss … The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“There is a homely old adage which runs: “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.” If the American nation will speak softly, and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president … is morally treasonable to the American public.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“No nation deserves to exist if it permits itself to lose the stern and virile virtues; and this without regard to whether the loss is due to the growth of a heartless and all-absorbing commercialism, to prolonged indulgence in luxury and soft, effortless ease, or to the deification of a warped and twisted sentimentality.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt Quotes on Courage
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“There were all kinds of things I was afraid of at first, ranging from grizzly bears to ‘mean’ horses and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“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 nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.” – Teddy Roosevelt
Funny Teddy Roosevelt Quotes
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“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.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.” – Teddy Roosevelt
“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‘Present’ or ‘Not guilty.’” – Teddy Roosevelt
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