“It is a dredful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office.”

-San Francisco, California, May 14, 1903

“Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rest the future of the years.”

– The Great Adventure, 1918

“Probably the best test of the true love of liberty in any country is the way in which minorities are treated in that country.”

– Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

“I have mighty little use for ethics that are applied with such inefficiency that no good results come.”

– Harvard University, December 14, 1910

“There is a certain tendency among excellent people to believe that everything can be accomplished by law; that when there is any wrong, it is due to what they call the state of society, and that there is immediate need for radical and sweeping changes in the social system.”

– Kansas City, Missouri, May 1, 1903

“Diplomacy is utterly useless where there is no force behind it; the diplomat is the servant, not the master, of the soldier.”

– Newport, Rhode Island, June 2, 1897

“I like to see Quentin practicing baseball. It gives me hope that one of my boys will not take after his father in this respect, and will prove able to play the national game.”

– Source 1, 2

“A man whose business is sedentary should get some kind of exercise if he wishes to keep himself in as good physical trim as his brethren who do manual labor.”

– An Autobiography, 1913.

“War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong.”

– Oyster Bay, New York – July 4, 1906.

“There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility.”

– Abilene, Kansas, May 2, 1903.

“Whenever there is tyranny by the majority I shall certainly fight it.”

– St. Louis, Missouri, March 28, 1912.

“More and more I have grown to have a horror of the reformer who is half charlatan and half fanatic, and ruins his own cause by overstatement.”

-Oyster Bay, New York – July 20, 1901.