Teddy Roosevelt Quotes

Teddy Roosevelt was an important American figure, full of wisdom and courage. If you’re looking for inspiration to kickstart your day or simply want to learn something from the 26th president of the United States of America, keep reading!

Image shows a picture of Teddy Roosevelt in black and white in front of the flag of the United States of America. — Here are 100+ quotes for you to choose from!

“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
“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.”
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”
“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.”
“Though conditions have grown puzzling in their complexity, though changes have been vast, yet we may remain absolutely sure of one thing; that now as ever in the past, and as it will ever be in the future, there can be no substitute for elemental virtues, for the elemental qualities to which we allude when we speak of a man, not only as a good man, but as emphatically a man. We can build up the standard of individual citizenship and individual well-being, we can raise the national standard and make it what it can and shall be made, only by each of us steadfastly keeping in mind that there can be no substitute for the world-old commonplace qualities of truth, justice, and courage, thrift, industry, common sense and genuine sympathy with the fellow feelings of others.”
“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”
“There are two things that I want you to make up your minds to: first, that you are going to have a good time as long as you live – I have no use for the sour-faced man – and next, that you are going to do something worthwhile, that you are going to work hard and do the things you set out to do.”
“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”
“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
“Don’t foul, don’t flinch-hit the line hard.”
“Nothing in this world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.”
“I have always been fond of the West African proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’”
“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.”
“Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.”
“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.”
“The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.”
“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.”
“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”
“Courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s the choice that something else is greater than that fear.”
“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.”
“When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.”
“Aggressive fighting for the right is the greatest sport in the world.”
“I am a part of everything that I have read.”
“It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.”
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing.”
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
“We must show, not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance, and above all the power of devotion to a lofty ideal, which made great the men who founded this Republic in the days of Washington, which made great the men who preserved this Republic in the days of Abraham Lincoln.”
“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.”
“Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.”
“In this world the one thing supremely worth having is the opportunity to do well and worthily a piece of work of vital consequence to the welfare of mankind.”
“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”
“Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.”
“Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little.”
“The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer.”
“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.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
“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.”
“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
“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!”
“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.”
“Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
“A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
“Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.”
“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!”
“You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so. Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.”
“Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
“When you play, play hard; when you work, don’t play at all.”
“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.”
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort.”
“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”
“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.”
“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
“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.”
“Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.”
“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.”
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it.”
“Let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.”
“The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.”
“Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.”
“If you’ve got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow.”
“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.”
“I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.”
“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.”
“Politeness [is] a sign of dignity, not subservience.”
“With self-discipline, almost anything is possible.”
“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.”
“The reason fat men are good natured is they can neither fight nor run.”
“Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.”
“The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.”
“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
“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.”
“Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”
“The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”
“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.”
“Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.”
“If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.”
“A stream cannot rise larger than its source.”
“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”
“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.”
“Peace is normally a great good, and normally it coincides with righteousness, but it is righteousness and not peace which should bind the conscience of a nation as it should bind the conscience of an individual; and neither a nation nor an individual can surrender conscience to another’s keeping.”
“All the resources we need are in the mind.”
“There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.”
“In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: hit the line hard.”
“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”
“The men and women who have the right ideals… are those who have the courage to strive for the happiness which comes only with labor and effort and self-sacrifice, and those whose joy in life springs in part from power of work and sense of duty.”
“Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not to be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.”
“We need the iron qualities that go with true manhood. We need the positive virtues of resolution, of courage, of indomitable will, of power to do without shrinking the rough work that must always be done.”
“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.”
“At sometime in our lives a devil dwells within us, causes heartbreaks, confusion and troubles, then dies.”
“No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.”
“A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.”
“The worst of all fears is the fear of living”
“For those who fight for it life has a flavor the sheltered will never know”
“90% of the work in this country is done by people who don’t feel good”.”
“Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.”
“The nation behaves well if it treats its natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased, and not impaired, in value.”
“It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don’t know anything outside their own business.”
“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”
“Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.”
“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.”
“Nothing worth having comes easy.”

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