“If the man does his duty as a man, if he is fearless and honorable, upright in his dealings with his fellows, if he does his duty to his family, to the state, that is all that we have the right to ask about him.”

Speech at the Exposition Building, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 3, 1903

“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.”

Speech in Chicago, Illinois
April 10, 1899

“We are in honor bound each to strive according to his or her strength to bring ever nearer the day when justice and wisdom shall obtain in public life as in private life.”

Remarks at Colorado Springs, Colorado
August 2, 1901

“After all the very highest and most fundamental work of good citizenship is to leave the next generation in right shape.”

Letter to Charles J. Frisch
July 24, 1911

“A nation’s greatness lies in its possibility of achievement in the present, and nothing helps it more than the consciousness of achievement in the past.”

American Ideals
1897

“The greatest possible good can be done by the extension of a helping hand at the right moment, but the attempt to carry any one permanently can end in nothing but harm.”

Century
October 1900

“The vital thing for the nation no less than the individual to remember is that, while dreaming and talking both have their uses, these uses must chiefly exist in seeing the dream realized and the talk turned into action.”

Stafford Little Lecture at Princeton University,
November 1917

“We call to mind the deaths of those who died that the nation might live, who wagered all that life holds dear for the great prize of death in battle.”

Remarks on Memorial Day
Arlington, Virginia, May 30, 1902

“Under our form of government voting is not merely a right but a duty, and, moreover, a fundamental and necessary duty if a man is to be a good citizen.”

Seventh Annual Message
December 3, 1907

“Let us remember that words count only when they give expression to deeds or are to be translated into them.”

Speech to the Nobel Prize Committee
1910

“No man, not even the soldier who does his duty, stands quite on the level with the wife and mother who has done her duty.”

The Outlook
April 8, 1911