In Honor of his Library’s Opening, the Most Popular Quotes by Theodore Roosevelt over the Past Year
WASHINGTON, DC – With the official opening of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library scheduled for this Saturday in North Dakota, The Ripon Society has compiled a list of the 10 most popular quotes by America’s 26th President over the past year.
“Since 2009,” stated Jim Conzelman, the President & CEO of The Ripon Society, “we have been posting a quote from Theodore Roosevelt on our website and social media pages every Tuesday morning. We call them Teddy Tweets, and we have posted 819 of them over the past 17 years. As an organization that has long been inspired by his leadership, we thought – and we continue to believe – it is a fitting way to honor TR’s legacy each week.”
In anticipation of the Library’s opening on July 4th, Conzelman noted, and as a way to further commemorate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding on that same day, Ripon Society staff examined which Teddy Tweets received the most likes on Facebook over the past 12 months, from June 2025 – June 2026. The results are below:
10. “A man must have in him a strong and earnest sense of duty and the desire to accomplish good for the commonwealth, without regard to the effect upon himself, to be useful in Congress.” – essay in Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, October 1892
9. “The war we wage must be waged against misconduct, against wrongdoing wherever it is found; and we must stand heartily for the rights of every decent man, whether he be a man of great wealth or a man who earns his livelihood as a wage-worker or a tiller of the soil.” – Eighth Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1908
8. “We live in a rough world and good work in it can be done only by those who are not afraid to do their part in the dust and smoke of the arena.” – Address in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 3, 1903
7. “Our prime need as a nation is that every American should understand and work with his fellow-citizens, getting into touch with them, so that by actual contact he may learn that fundamentally he and they have the same interests, needs, and aspirations.” Speech at Labor Day Picnic in Chicago, September 3, 1900
6. “Your history, rightly studied, will teach us the time worn truth that in war as in peace we need chiefly the everyday commonplace virtues, and above all an unflagging sense of duty.” – Address in Burlington, Vermont, September 5, 1901
5. “The good citizen is the man who does what can be done as well as it possibly can be done.” – Speech in Westfield, Massachusetts, September 2, 1902
4. “Remember that the whole is the sum of the parts. It is a very good thing to come out to Fourth of July celebrations and hear what a great country we have.” – Independence Day Address in Oyster Bay, New York, July 4, 1906
3. “We need courage, we need decency, and we need the saving grace of common sense.” – Address in Shenandoah, Iowa, April 28, 1903
2. “A strong and wise people will study its own failures no less than its triumphs, for there is wisdom to be learned from the study of both, of the mistake as well as of the success.” – Sixth Annual Address to Congress, December 3, 1906
1. “Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.” – Speech in Cleveland, Ohio, November 2, 1916
Additional information on the number of likes each of the above Teddy Tweets received can be found here. For a list of all 819 Teddy Tweets posted by The Ripon Society since 2009, please click here.
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.