“It is true that no nation can be really great unless it is great in peace; in industry, integrity, honesty.”

Address at the Naval War College
June 1897

“Let this nation fear God and take its own part. Let it scorn to do wrong to great or small. Let it exercise patience and charity toward all other peoples, and yet at whatever cost unflinchingly stand for the right when the right is menaced by the might which backs wrong.”

Fear God and Take Your Own Part
1916

“It is our duty to try to devise some efficient plan for securing the peace of righteousness throughout the world.”

New York Times
September 27, 1914

“Do not get into a fight if you can possibly avoid it. If you get in, see it through.”

Speech before the National Press Club
January 24, 1918

“A great free people owes it to itself and to all mankind not to sink into helplessness before the powers of evil.”

Fourth Annual Message to Congress
December 6, 1904

“Washington and Lincoln set the standard of conduct for the public servants of this people.”

Letter to Sir Otto Trevelyan
November 6, 1908

“Wherever I have gone, whatever audience I have addressed, the fact that has jumped to the eye was the fact that a good American is a good American in any part of this country.”

Remarks in Seattle, Washington
May 23, 1903

“Of all games I personally like football best, and I would rather see my boys play it than see them play any other.”

Letter to Walter Camp
March 11, 1895

“There is no limit to the greatness of the future before America, before our beloved land.”

The Great Adventure
1918

“Americanism means many things. It means equality of rights and, therefore, equality of duty and obligation.”

Letter to S. Stanwood Menken
January 10, 1917

“We all of us feel, most rightly and properly, that we belong to the greatest nation that has ever existed on the earth.”

July 4, 1886
Dickinson, Dakota Territory