“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

“In the ordinary and low sense which we attach to the words ‘partisan’ and ‘politician,’ a judge of the Supreme Court should be neither.”

Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge
July 10, 1902

“The people who have come to this country from Ireland have contributed to the stock of our common citizenship qualities which are essential to the welfare of every great nation.”

Speech to the Society of Friendly Sons of St. Patrick
March 17, 1905

“The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck.”

Speech in Washington, DC
April 14, 1906

“The fundamental rule in our national life — the rule which underlies all others — is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.”

First Annual Message
December 3, 1901