Theodore Roosevelt Short Quotes: 85+ Powerful Words of Wisdom to Inspire You

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.

Our chief usefulness to humanity rests on our combining power with high purpose.

Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

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

Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

It is not the critic who counts.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ’em, certainly I can, then get busy and find out how to do it.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.

It is only through labor and painful effort that we move on to better things.

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you have got to start young.

Every man owes a part of his time and money to the business or industry in which he is engaged.

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Nothing worth having comes easy.

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life.

The only man who never makes mistakes is the man who never does anything.

Success, the real, the lasting success, comes only to the man who has worked far more than the ordinary workaday man.

Never be haughty to the humble; never be humble to the haughty.

Knowing what’s right doesn’t mean much unless you do what’s right.

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action.

If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.

The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything.

Efficiency is a good thing but character is a better thing.

It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.

Bodily vigor is good, and vigor of intellect is even better, but far above both is character.

No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with the rugged independence which will sometimes be necessary for the public good, if he is influenced by the fear of hostile combinations.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when the people gets a chance it shall give business a square deal.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets.

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.

Every person who invests in well-selected real estate in a growing section of a prosperous community adopts the surest and safest method of becoming independent.

The more you know about the past, the better prepared you are for the future.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

There is a delight in the hardy life of the open.

Turn the necessities of life into a game.

I am as strong as a bull moose and you can use me to the limit.

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.

No people ever will be permanently benefited if it does not think and work for itself.

Books are all very well in their way, and we love them at Sagamore Hill; but they are not to be compared with life.

I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life. I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well.

Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.

Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.

We wish peace, but we wish the peace of justice, the peace of righteousness.

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country.

Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

We have room for but one flag, the American flag.

We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.

We have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

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

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.

Councils of War never fight.

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

Americanism is a question of spirit, conviction, and purpose, not of creed or birthplace.

It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty.

The farther one gets into the wilderness, the greater is the attraction of its lonely freedom.

There is delight in the hardy life of the open.

Keep close to Nature’s heart.

I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.

The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem.

Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it.

The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased and not impaired in value.

Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm are not, and never will be, in my opinion, the real conservationists.

Wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people alive today, but the property of unknown generations.

I hate to see a really good man’s brain wrecked when it might just as well have been that of some good-for-nothing.

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness.

In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen.

I love not man the less, but Nature more.

Take care of the land and the land will take care of you.

The waste of natural resources, the despoiling of the country, must stop.