Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate; and while the debate goes on, the canal does also.

The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it. Life is a great adventure, and I want to say to you, accept it in such a spirit.

To hell with the Constitution when people want coal!

I want to see you game, boys, I want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.

Life brings sorrows and joys alike. It is what a man does with them - not what they do to him - that is the true test of his mettle.

A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

The Armenian massacre was the greatest crime of the war.

Profanity is the parlance of the fool. Why curse when there is such a magnificent language with which to discourse?

A just war is in the long run far better for a man's soul than the most prosperous peace.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

I want to see you shoot the way you shout.

It is impossible to win the great prizes of life without running risks.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

A really great people, proud and high spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

War is not merely justifiable, but imperative upon honorable men, upon an honorable nation, where peace can only be obtained by the sacrifice of conscientious conviction or of national welfare.

The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages.

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.

After the war, and until the day of his death, his position on almost every public question was either mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both.