“It is the people, and not the judges, who are entitled to say what their constitution means, for the constitution is theirs, it belongs to them and not to their servants in office.”

Scribner’s Magazine
1912

“Labor Day is rightly an American holiday, for every American who is worth his salt works, and if he doesn’t there is something wrong with him.”

Speech in Springfield, MA
September 2, 1902

“I feel an impatient contempt for the man of words if he is merely a man of words. The great speech must always be the speech of a man with a great soul who has a thought worth putting behind words, and whose acts bear out the words he utters.”

Letter to H.C. Lodge
July 19, 1908

“…no man should be held excusable if he does not perform what he promises, unless for the best and most sufficient reason.”

The Strenuous Life
1899

“Sometimes in life, both at school and afterwards, fortune will go against anyone, but if he just keeps pegging away and don’t lose his courage things always take a turn for the better in the end.“

Letter to his son Kermit
December 2, 1904

“Centuries must pass before the wound not only scars over but becomes completely forgotten, and the memory becomes a bond of union and not a cause of division. It is our business to shorten the time as much as possible.”

Letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan
January 1, 1908

“Americanism means the virtues of honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood – the virtues that made America.”

Theodore Roosevelt
Letter to the Congress of Constructive Patriotism
January 26, 1917

“If next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.”

Remarks at the Republican National Convention
July 27, 1904