“I acted for the common well-being of all our people, whenever and in whatever manner was necessary, unless prevented by direct constitutional or legislative prohibition.”

An Autobiography, 1913

“No great success can ever be won save by accepting the fact that, normally, sacrifice of some kind must come in winning the success.”

Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA, March 22, 1911

“When there is a great unrest, partly reasoning and partly utterly unreasoning and unreasonable, it becomes extremely difficult to beat a loud-mouthed demagogue, especially if he is a demagogue of great wealth.”

Letter to Henry Cabot Lodge, November 9, 1911

“To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

Message to Congress, December 3, 1907

“In thanking God for the mercies extended to us in the past, we beseech Him that He may not withhold them in the future, and that our hearts may be roused to war steadfastly for good and against all the forces of evil, public and private.”

Proclamation 508, Thanksgiving Day, October 31, 1903

“I fight when I am attacked.”

New York City Hall, May 5, 1896

“Honesty we must have;  no brilliance, no ‘smartness,’ can take its place.”

New York City, October 5, 1898

“There is no use in trying to rally around the past … If the Republican Party takes the ground that the world must be the same old world, the Republican Party is lost.”

Letter to Will H. Hayes, May 15, 1918

“The man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic – the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.”

New York, 1891

“If we had no party allegiance, our politics would become mere windy anarchy, and, under present conditions, our government could hardly continue at all.”

Atlantic Monthly, August 1894

“There can be no greater mistake from the democratic point of view, nothing more ruinous can be imagined from the point of view of a true democracy, than to believe that democracy means absence of leadership.”

New York City, November 16, 1916