“We, here in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world, the fate of the coming years; and shame and disgrace will be ours
if in our eyes the light of high resolve is dimmed, if we
trail in the dust the golden hopes of men.”

– at Carnegie Hall, March 20, 1912

“At Sagamore Hill we love a great many things—birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and
children and hard work and the joy of life.”

– An Autobiography, 1913

“Christmas was an occasion of literally delirious joy… I never knew anyone else have what seemed to me such attractive Christmases, and in the next generation I tried to reproduce them
exactly for my own children.”

– An Autobiography, 1913

“I don’t think partisanship should ever obscure the truth.”

– September 14, 1881 letter to
Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Sr.

“It is not in the power of any human being to devise legislation or administration by which every man shall achieve success and have happiness; it not only is not in the power of any man to do that,
but if any man says that he can do it, distrust him as a quack.”

– Dallas, Texas, April 5, 1905

“There are two kinds of historians: one, the delver, the bricklayer, the man who laboriously gathers together bare facts; and the other, the builder, the architect, who out of these facts makes the great edifice of history. Both are indispensable; but it is only the
latter who can be called an historian in the highest sense.”

– Bookman, June 1897

“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”

– Chicago, Illinois, April 10, 1899

“[O]nly a very few great reforms or great measures of any
kind can be carried through without concession.”

– Atlantic Monthly, August 1894

“There is no class of our citizens, big or small, who so emphatically deserve well of the country as the officers and the
enlisted men of the army and navy.”

– New York Times, November 22, 1914

“It is impossible for a democracy to endure if the political
lines are drawn to coincide with class lines.”

– Century, January 1900

“I think we can say this much, Republicans have not
always done well, but it will be an evil day when
they do as badly as the Democrats.”

– New York, October 28, 1882

“It often happens that the good conditions of the past can be regained, not by going back, but by going forward. We cannot recreate what is dead; we cannot stop the march of events;
but we can direct this march, and out of the new conditions
develop something better than the past knew.”

– The Outlook, August 27, 1910