“The man shows little wisdom and a low sense of duty who fails to see that love of country is one of the elemental virtues.”

Forum, April 1894

“True liberty shows itself to best advantage in protecting the rights of others, and especially of minorities.”

Oxford University, England, June 7, 1910

“Every leader of a great reform has to contend, on the one hand, with the open, avowed enemies of the reform, and on the other hand, with its extreme advocates, who wish the impossible, and who join hands with their extreme opponents to defeat the rational friends of the reform.”

Churchman, March 17, 1900

“It does make me flame with indignation when men who pretend to be the custodians of morals, and who sit in judgement from an Olympian height of virtue on the deeds of other men, themselves offend in a way that puts them on a level with the most corrupt scoundrel.”

Letter to William R. Nelson, Late 1910

“The prime and all-important lesson to learn is that while preparedness will not guarantee a nation against war, unpreparedness eventually insures not merely war, but utter disaster.”

 Metropolitan, August 1915

“He is but a poor American who, looking at this field, does not feel within himself a deeper reverence for the Nation’s past and a higher purpose to make the Nation’s future rise level to her past.”

 Gettysburg National Cemetery, Decoration Day, May 30, 1904

“There is no surer way of destroying the capacity for self-government in people than to accustom that people to demanding the impossible or the improper from its public men.”

San Francisco, California, May 14, 1903

“The welfare of the woman is even more important than the welfare of the man; for the mother is the real Atlas, who bears aloft in her strong and tender arms the destiny of the world. ”

The Outlook, August 27, 1910

“We wish to see the business man prosper and make money, for unless he does prosper and make money he can neither permanently pay good wages to his employees nor permanently render good service to the public.”

Portsmouth, Rhode Island, July 2, 1913

“We stand for the honest enforcement of law, and in the long run I have faith that the American people will approve of that stand, because the honest enforcement of law is vital to the ultimate well-being of our great Republic.”

Buffalo, New York, September 11, 1895

“Absolute equality, absolute justice in matters of taxation will probably never be realized.”

Message to New York Legislature, January 3, 1900