76 Theodore Roosevelt Quotes (Courage, Leadership & the Strenuous Life)

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 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 and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for 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 he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore 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 much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

Theodore Roosevelt

The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic — the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.

Theodore Roosevelt

Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.

Theodore Roosevelt

We cannot avoid meeting great issues. All that we can determine for ourselves is whether we shall meet them well or ill.

Theodore Roosevelt

Success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

Greatness means strife for nation and man alike. 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

To sit at 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

Get action. Do things; be sane; don’t fritter away your time; create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody; get action.

Theodore 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

Don’t hit at all if you can help it; don’t hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep.

Theodore Roosevelt

Power invariably means both responsibility and danger.

Theodore Roosevelt

The object of government is the welfare of the people.

Theodore Roosevelt

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Theodore Roosevelt

The bulk of government is not legislation but administration.

Theodore Roosevelt

Men can never escape being governed. Either they must govern themselves or they must submit to being governed by others.

Theodore Roosevelt

Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair-dealing, and commonsense.

Theodore Roosevelt

We must treat each man on his worth and merits as a man. We must see that each is given a square deal, because he is entitled to no more and should receive no less.

Theodore Roosevelt

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled, and less than that no man shall have.

Theodore Roosevelt

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

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

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right.

Theodore Roosevelt

I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who doesn’t work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Theodore Roosevelt

Unless a man is master of his soul, all other kinds of mastery amount to little.

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

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

Theodore 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

Success — the real success — does not depend upon the position you hold, but upon how you carry yourself in that position.

Theodore Roosevelt

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

Theodore Roosevelt

Democracy to be successful, must mean self-knowledge, and above all, self-mastery.

Theodore Roosevelt

I don’t for a moment believe that we can turn back the wheels of progress.

Theodore Roosevelt

There are good men and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man’s heart and soul, the man’s worth and actions, determine his standing.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.

Theodore Roosevelt

There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.

Theodore Roosevelt

Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed or line of descent.

Theodore Roosevelt

Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.

Theodore Roosevelt

Thrice happy is the nation that has a glorious history.

Theodore Roosevelt

Is America a weakling, to shrink from the work of the great world powers? No! The young giant of the West stands on a continent and clasps the crest of an ocean in either hand. Our nation, glorious in youth and strength, looks into the future with eager eyes and rejoices as a strong man to run a race.

Theodore Roosevelt

A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

The welfare of each of us is dependent fundamentally upon the welfare of all of us.

Theodore Roosevelt

We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals. What we have a right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man.

Theodore Roosevelt

Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men.

Theodore Roosevelt

Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man — including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man.

Theodore Roosevelt

Working women have the same need to protection that working men have; the ballot is as necessary for one class as to the other; we do not believe that with the two sexes there is identity of function; but we do believe there should be equality of right.

Theodore Roosevelt

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.

Theodore Roosevelt

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others.

Theodore Roosevelt

Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

Theodore Roosevelt

Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the ‘the game belongs to the people.’ So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people.

Theodore Roosevelt

We have become great in a material sense because of the lavish use of our resources, and we have just reason to be proud of our growth. But 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of the 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 majestic beauty all unmarred.

Theodore 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.

Theodore Roosevelt

So any nation which in its youth lives only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of life.

Theodore Roosevelt

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

Theodore Roosevelt

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Theodore Roosevelt

It is no use to preach to [children] if you do not act decently yourself.

Theodore Roosevelt

Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rests the future of the years.

Theodore Roosevelt

There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful.

Theodore Roosevelt

An epidemic in indiscriminate assault upon character does no good, but very great harm.

Theodore Roosevelt