Quotes from Edmund Morris

the great fundamental questions looming before us,"21 namely, the unnatural alliance of politics and corporations. It

What worried Roosevelt was the inability of ordinary people to see the danger of this proliferation of cogs and cylinders and coins in American life.23 The corrupt power of corporations was increasing at an alarming rate

much of a muchness.

This would enable them to develop those noneconomic virtues—intelligence, unselfishness, courage, decency—which he loosely defined as "character." Character determined the worth of the individual, and "what is true of the individual is also true of the nation.

Three cheers for Mr. and Mrs. Bower and their really satisfactory American family of twelve children!

Nobody likes him now but the people

the most trenchant commentary was

It has been objected that I am a boy," said Roosevelt wearily—he had been hearing the charge for years—"but I can only offer the time-honored reply, that years will cure me of that." He

Doctor," came the reply, "I'm going to do all the things you tell me not to do. If I've got to live the sort of life you have described, I don't care how short it is." Having spat the wormwood out

Roosevelt could not help but be affected by the Chairman's worried mood. Before their meeting on 3 August he had been confident of a Republican victory in November, but after it he wrote gloomily to Cecil Spring Rice, "If Bryan wins, we have before us some years of social misery, not markedly different from that of any South American republic Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Bryan closely resembles Thomas Jefferson, whose accession to the Presidency was a terrible blow to this nation."21

UMW executives were openly inciting mobs to riot.

Most of the members are positively corrupt, and the others are really singularly incompetent.

Do keep these trees, keep all the wonderful scenery of this wonderful state unmarred by vandalism or the folly of man.

We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.

Persuasion should come before force. In any case it is the availability of raw power, not the use of it, that makes for effective diplomacy.

Madison Square Garden—of all places—to open his campaign on 12 August

We cannot, when the nation becomes fully civilized and very rich, continue to be civilized and rich unless the nation shows more foresight than we are showing at this moment.

As he waved at grizzled old Southerners, and they in turn waved the Stars and Stripes back at him, Roosevelt reflected that only thirty-three years before these men had been enemies of the Union.44 It took war to heal the scars of war; attack upon a foreign power to bring unity at home. But what future war would heal the scars of this one?

confidently, "President

The flood became an embarrassment for Roosevelt. Did all these men imagine they were buying him? "Corporate cunning has developed faster than the laws of nation and state

Unless wealth was chastened by culture or regulated by government, it was at worst predatory, at best boring.

A poet can do much more for his country than the proprietor of a nail factory.

a stocky figure in a frock coat sprang up the front steps of the White House.

When we thus rule ourselves, we have the responsibilities of sovereigns, not of subjects. We must never exercise our rights either wickedly or thoughtlessly; we can continue to preserve them in but one possible way, by making the proper use of them.