“The best scheme of government can do little more than provide against injustice, and then let the individual rise or fall on his own merits.”

 The Outlook, July 28, 1900

“Corruption in any form, whether in the world of politics or in the world of business, represents an offense against the community of so grave a character that the offender should be hunted down as a criminal; and the greater his ability and success, the greater the wrong he has committed, and the heavier should be his punishment.”

Outlook, November 8, 1913

“Remember that every great speech that has come down through history has obtained and kept its place only because it represented either achievement in the past or a resolute purpose for achievement in the future.”

Speech at Trinity College
Hartford, Connecticut
June 16, 1918

“My whole foreign policy was based on the exercise of intelligent forethought and of decisive action sufficiently far in advance of any likely crisis to make it improbable that we would run into serious trouble.”

 An Autobiography, 1913

“I believe with all my heart that the American people are fit for complete self-government, and that, in spite of all our failings and shortcomings, we of this Republic have more nearly realized than any other people on earth the ideal of justice attained through genuine popular rule.”

 Columbus, Ohio, February 21, 1912

“The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it.”

 Sagamore Hill, New York, January 1, 1916

“I do not much admire the Senate, because it is such a helpless body when efficient work for good is to be done.  Two or three determined Senators seem able to hold up legislation, or at least good legislation, in an astonishing way.”

 Letter to Joseph Bucklin Bishop, March 23, 1905

“There must be the public opinion back of the laws or the laws themselves will be of no avail.”

 Washington, DC, December 3, 1907

“I advocate genuine popular rule in nation, in state, in city, in county, as offering the best possible means for eliminating special privilege alike in politics and in business, and for getting a genuine equality of opportunity for every man to show the stuff there is in him.”

 St. Louis, MO, March 28, 1912

“The men who have made our national greatness are those who faced danger and overcame it, who met difficulties and surmounted them, not those whose lines were cast in such pleasant places that toil and dread were ever far from them.”

 Galena, Illinois, June 17, 1912

“This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.”

Memphis, Tennessee, October 25, 1905