“It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks.”

An Autobiography

1913

“I think I hate nothing more than a bluff where the bluffer does not intend to make it good.”

Letter to H.C. Lodge, May 2, 1896

“It is folly to strengthen our foes by assailing our friends.”

Century,
February, 1890

“We must shape conditions so that each man shall have a fair chance in life.”

At Pacific Theological Seminary,
Spring 1911

“A half-truth is always simple, whereas the whole truth is very, very difficult.”

The New York Times,
September 27, 1914

“We should discourage driving property out of the State by unwise taxation, or levying a tax which is in effect largely a tax upon honesty.”

Annual Message to Legislature,
January 2, 1899

“Prosperity can never be created by law alone, although it is easy enough to destroy it by mischievous laws.”

First annual message, Washington DC,
December 3, 1901

“No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but the interest of the particular class to which he belongs.”

Speech in Washington, DC,
November 22, 1904

“The object of government is the welfare of the people.”

Speech in Chicago,
April 10, 1899

“We shall be guilty of criminal folly if we fail to insist on the complete and thoroughgoing unification of our people.”

The Great Adventure
1918

“We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond.”

Speech in Chicago
April 10, 1899