Theodore Roosevelt Quotes About Change: 115+ Powerful Lessons to Embrace Growth & Transformation

There can be no life without change, and to be afraid of what is different or unfamiliar is to be afraid of life.

Constructive change offers the best method for avoiding destructive change.

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

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

Be practical as well as generous in your ideals. Keep your eyes on the stars, but remember to keep your feet on the ground.

You can change the simile, to keep our eyes to the stars, but remember that our feet have got to be on the ground.

A great democracy has got to be progressive, or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy.

The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.

It is only the little souls that are afraid of change.

Nine-tenths of wisdom consists in being wise in time.

In popular government results worth having can only be achieved slowly.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same great adventure.

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

A person who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

His place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

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

Sometimes we may be right and get licked, and that is bad, but there are other things worse. Not to have tried to right a wrong is worse.

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

I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character.

Ability is of no account without character.

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

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

There must be a competent proportion of self-sufficiency and reliance shown by every man.

Self-restraint and self-mastery are as necessary to the citizen as steam is to the locomotive.

A man’s usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

It is far more important to be right than to be consistent.

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.

Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell them, certainly I can. Then get busy and find out how to do it.

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again.

There is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause.

Who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

Do not hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting, but never hit softly.

Get action. Do things, be sane, don’t fritter away your time, create, act, take a place wherever you are and be somebody, get action.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

When you play, play hard, when you work, don’t play at all.

We must show not merely in great crises, but in the everyday affairs of life, the qualities of practical intelligence, of courage, of hardihood, and endurance.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness.

The leader leads, and the boss drives.

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

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

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 man is above the law and no man is below it.

The government is us, we are the government, you and I.

Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.

Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life, it matters not how brilliant his capacity.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

A vote is like a rifle, its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them.

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.

Conservation means development as much as it does protection.

We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.

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

Comparison is the thief of joy.

Most of us tiptoe through life in order to make it safely to death.

It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone, but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching unless it can be enjoyed after arriving.

We of an older generation can help the young people, but we cannot be young for them.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams, the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

In life as in a football game, the principle to follow is: hit the line hard, don’t foul and don’t shirk, but hit the line hard.

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

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

There are men who by their courage, by their genius, by their force of character, have raised themselves above their fellows.

Ours is a government of liberty, by, through, and under the law.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

The average man must be permitted to labor, to live, to rear his children, to think, and to worship as he desires.

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization.

The wise, healthy citizen must both develop his own energies and cooperate with his fellows.

Show me a family of children who never fight and I will show you a family that loves each other less than it should.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Actions lie louder than words.

If I must choose between righteousness and peace, I choose righteousness.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.

It is a base double standard of morality which applies one code of ethics to a rich man and another to a poor man.

When we ask fair treatment for labor, we do not mean that capital shall be treated unfairly.

Ill would it fare with the Republic if there ever came a time when Congress and the Executive were controlled purely by representatives of any particular class.

There must be ever present in our minds the fundamental truth that in a republic such as ours the only safety is to be found in honesty.

We should free our minds from the deadening influence of mere legalistic phrases.

The one prime necessity is to keep the essential democracy of methods and of quality in our life real and vital.

Free speech, exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where the people are themselves free.

This great American Republic means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

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

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

The average American is only fair to good in whatever he is doing, but he is superior to any average European because he can adapt himself to novel conditions with much greater ease.

It is only under free governments that peoples have gone forward in a really large and permanent way.

To sit home, read one’s favorite paper, and scoff at the misdeeds of the men who do things is easy, but it is markedly ineffective.

Politeness is a sign of dignity, not subservience.

We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the cause of disaster.

It is better to try great things, even at the risk of failure, than to know neither victory nor defeat.

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car, but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

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

The more strong and vigorous a nation is, the more necessary is it that its sportsmen should scorn to be timid or lazy.

Remember always that the man who does a thing so that it is worth doing is always a man who does his work for the work’s sake.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

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

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.