“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

“It is always easy for an individual or a party to make promises; the strain comes when the party or individual has to make them good.”

Baltimore, Maryland
February 23, 1889

“I believe in the party to which we belong because I believe in the principles for which the Republican Party stood in the days of Abraham Lincoln; and furthermore, and especially because I believe in treating those principles not as dead but as living.”

At the New York Republican State Convention, Saratoga
September 27, 1910

“Let us insist that the truth be told. The truth only harms weaklings. The American people wish the truth, and can stand the truth.”

Kansas City Star
January 21, 1918

“A typical vice of American politics – the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues, and the announcement of radical policies with much sound and fury, and at the same time with a cautious accompaniment of weasel phrases each of which sucks the meat out of the preceding statement.”

The Outlook,
July 27, 1912

“Congress is the legislative body. To legislate means to make laws, not merely to talk about them.”

Forum
December 1895