“The first requisite for the welfare of any community is justice.”

Outlook
February 25, 1911

“The business of a statesman is to try constantly to keep international relations better, to do away with causes of friction, and secure as nearly as ideal justice as actual conditions will permit.”

Letter to Baron Kentaro Kaneko,
May 23, 1907

“It is a good thing for all Americans, and it is an especially good thing for young Americans, to remember the men who have given their lives in war and peace to the service of their fellow countrymen.”

Preface to Hero Tales from American History,
1895

“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. Such a policy would defeat even its own end.”

Speech before the Hamilton Club, Chicago,
April 10, 1899

“I would rather go out of politics feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I had acted as I ought not to.”

Speech in the New York Assembly
March 2, 1883

“The soul of France, at this moment, seems purified of all dross; it burns like the clear flame of fire on a sacred tripod.”

Fear God and Take Your Own Part
1916

“It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.”

Atlantic Monthly
August, 1894

“A ton of oratory is not worth an ounce of hard-headed, kindly common sense.”

Speech at Labor Day Picnic, Chicago
September 3, 1900

“The least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man.”

Speech before National Editorial Association
June 10, 1907

“We fight for our own rights. We fight for the rights of mankind… The free people who govern themselves are lined up against the governments which deny freedom to their people.”

Speech at Stock Yards Pavilion, Chicago
April 28, 1917

“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.”

Harvard Graduates’ Magazine
October 1892

“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.”

Sixth Annual Message in Washington,
December 3, 1906