I am simply unable to understand the value placed by so many people upon great wealth.
If we are to be really great people, we must strive in good faith to play a great part in the world. We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.
We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the cause of disaster.
The fool who has not sense to discriminate between what is good and what is bad is well nigh as dangerous as the man who does discriminate and yet chooses the bad.
Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.
There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.
To borrow a simile from the football field, we believe that men must play fair, but that there must be no shirking, and that the success can only come to the player who hits the line hard.
The object of government is the welfare of the people.
The bulk of government is not legislation but administration.
It is by no means necessary that a great nation should always stand at the heroic level. But no nation has the root of greatness in it unless in time of need it can rise to the heroic mood.
Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.
Men with the muckrake are often indispensable to the well-being of society, but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.
To divide along the lines of section or caste or creed is un-American.
No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character.
The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it. Life is a great adventure, and I want to say to you, accept it in such a spirit.
No President has ever enjoyed himself as much as I?
There should be at least ten times the number of rifles in the country as there are now.
Every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.
The man who holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare.
The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens.