Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

We are the heirs of the ages

Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions.

Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.

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.

It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.

the more I see the better satisfied I am that 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.

We want men who will fix their eyes on the stars, but who will not forget that their feet must walk on the ground.

So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat

Credit should go with the performance of duty, and not with what is very often the accident of glory.

Books are almost as individual as friends. There is no earthly use in laying down general laws about them. Some meet the needs of one person, and some of another; and each person should beware of the booklover's besetting sin, of what Mr. Edgar Allan Poe calls 'the mad pride of intellectuality,' taking the shape of arrogant pity for the man who does not like the same kind of books.

There were all kinds of things of which I was afraid at first, ranging from grizzly bears to "mean" horses and gunfighters; but by acting as if I was not afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most men can have the same experience if they choose.

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.