“The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult.”

Fifth Annual Message to Congress
December 5, 1905

“In dealing with all these social problems, with the intimate relations of the family, with wealth in private use and business use, with labor, with poverty, the one prime necessity is to remember that, though hardness of heart is a great evil, it is no greater an evil than softness of head.”

Oxford University
June 7, 1910

“There is one quality which perhaps, strictly speaking, is as much intellectual as moral, but which is too often wholly lacking in men of high intellectual ability, and without which real character cannot exist – namely, the fundamental gift of commonsense.”

The Outlook
November 8, 1913

“The good citizen is the man who, whatever his wealth or his poverty, strives manfully to do his duty to himself, to his family, to his neighbor, to the state; who is incapable of the baseness which manifests itself either in arrogance or envy, but who while demanding justice for himself is no less scrupulous to offer justice to others.”

New York State Fair
September 7, 1903

“Americanism is not a matter of birthplace, of ancestry, of creed, of occupation. Americanism is a matter of the spirit that is within, of a man’s soul. From the time when we first became an independent Nation to the present moment there has never been a generation in which some of our most distinguished and most useful men were not born on the other side of the Atlantic.”

New York City,
February 14, 1905

“No other citizens deserve so well of the Republic as the veterans, the survivors of those who saved the Union. They did the one deed which if left undone would have meant that all else in our history went for nothing.”

First Annual Message to Congress,
December 3, 1901

“All that the law can do is to shape things that no injustice shall be done by one to the other, and that each man shall be given the first chance to show the stuff there is in him.”

Kansas City, Missouri
May 1, 1903

“A broken promise is bad enough in private life. It is worse in the field of politics. No man is worth his salt in public life who makes on the stump a pledge which he does not keep after election.”

Osawatomie, Kansas
August 31, 1910

“I believe in realizable ideals and in realizing them, in preaching what can be practiced and then in practicing it.”

An Autobiography,
1913

“Public servants must be given ample power to enable them to do their work. Remember that. If you tie the hands of a public servant so that he cannot do ill, you tie his hands so that he cannot do well … Leave his hands free. Give him the chance to do the job, and turn him out if he does not do the job well.”

Los Angeles, California,
March 21, 1911