“Self-governing free men must have the power to accept necessary compromises, to make necessary concessions, each sacrificing somewhat of prejudice, even of principle, and every group must show the necessary subordination of its particular interest of the community as a whole.”

Oliver Cromwell
1900

“I have a strong feeling that it is a President’s duty to get on with Congress if he possibly can, and that it is a reflection upon him if he and Congress come to a complete break.”

Letter to Theodore Roosevelt Jr.
January 31, 1909

“If we fail, the cause of free self-government throughout the world will rock to its foundations.”

Inaugural address
March 4, 1905

“Three-o’clock-in-the-morning courage is the most desirable kind.”

An Autobiography
1913

“The man who makes a promise which he does not intend to keep, and does not try to keep, should rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree what should be every man’s most precious possession – his honor.”

San Francisco, California
May 14, 1903

“It is a great mistake to think that the extremist is a better man than the moderate.”

Published in the “Churchman”
March 17, 1900

“If as a nation we are split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for creed … surely we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent will go down in crushing overthrow.”

New York, New York
October 12, 1915

“The American public rarely appreciate the high quality of the work done by some of our diplomats – work, usually entirely unnoticed and unrewarded, which redounds to the interest and the honor of all of us.”

An Autobiography
1913

“Every feat of heroism makes us forever indebted to the man who performed it.”

Des Moines, Iowa,
November 4, 1910