“Our prime need as a nation is that every American should understand and work with his fellow-citizens, getting into touch with them, so that by actual contact he may learn that fundamentally he and they have the same interests, needs, and aspirations.“

Chicago Labor Day Picnic
1900

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

An Autobiography
1913

“The first requisite of statesmanship is honesty. ”

Letter to Mrs. Nicholson
July 18, 1916

“Any effort is to be welcomed that brings people closer together, so as to secure a better understanding among those whose walks of life are in ordinary circumstances far apart.“

Social Settlement speech
1902

“…and I ask two things in connection with our foreign policy – that we never wrong the weak and that we never flinch from the strong.”

Address in Portland, Oregon
May 21, 1903

“A nation’s greatness lies in its possibility of achievement in the present, and nothing helps it more than the consciousness of achievement in the past.“

American Ideals
1897

“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, of the mistake as well as of the success.”

Sixth Annual Address to Congress
December 6, 1906

“Your history, rightly studied, will teach us the time worn truth that in war as in peace we need chiefly the everyday commonplace virtues, and above all an unflagging sense of duty.”

Address in Burlington, Vermont
September 5, 1901

“Remember that the whole is the sum of the parts. It is a very good thing to come out to Fourth of July celebrations and hear what a great country we have.”

Address at Oyster Bay
July 4, 1906

“Don’t hit a man at all if you can avoid it, but if you have to hit him, knock him out.”

Speech in Cleveland, Ohio
November 2, 1916

“We need courage, we need decency, and we need the saving grace of common sense.”

Address in Shenandoah, Iowa
April 28, 1903

“We live in a rough world and good work in it can be done only by those who are not afraid to do their part in the dust and smoke of the arena.”

Address in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
April 3, 1903