Theodore Roosevelt

“ You farmers, and wage-workers, and business men of this great State, of this mighty and wonderful Nation, are gathered together to-day, proud of your State and still prouder of your Nation, because your forefathers and predecessors have lived up to just this creed. You have received from their hands a great inheritance, and you will leave an even greater inheritance to your children, and your children’s children, provided only that you practice alike in your private and your public lives the strong virtues that have given us as a people greatness in the past. ”

“ Government of the people, by the people, for the people will perish from the face of the earth if bribery is tolerated. The givers and takers of bribes stand on an evil pre-eminence of infamy. The exposure and punishment of public corruption is an honor to a nation, not a disgrace. The shame lies in toleration, not in correction. No city or State, still less the Nation, can be injured by the enforcement of law. As long as public plunderers when detected can find a haven of refuge in any foreign land and avoid punishment, just so long encouragement is given them to continue their practices. ”

“ We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth. The capitalist who, alone or in conjunction with his fellows, performs some great industrial feat by which he wins money is a welldoer, not a wrongdoer, provided only he works in proper and legitimate lines. ”

“ Moreover, our homage must not only find expression on our lips; it must also show itself forth in our deeds. It is a great and glorious thing for a nation to be stirred to present triumph by the splendid memories of triumphs in the past. But it is a shameful thing for a nation, if these memories stir it only to empty boastings, to a pride that does not shrink from present abasement, to that self-satisfaction which accepts the high resolve and unbending effort of the father as an excuse for effortless ease or wrongly directed effort in the son. ”

“ From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens. The men whom we most delight to honor in all this land are those who, in the iron years from ’61 to ’65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving the Union. They did not choose the easy task. They did not shirk the difficult duty. Deliberately and of their own free will they strove for an ideal, upward and onward across the stony slopes of greatness. ”

“ It is forever to the honor of our nation that we brought forth the statesman who, with far-sighted vision, could pierce the clouds that obscured the sight of the keenest of his fellows, could see what the future inevitably held; and moreover that we had back of the statesman and behind him the men to whom it was given to fight in the greatest war ever waged for the good of mankind, for the betterment of the world. ”

“ Terrible though that contest was, in which with blood and tears and sweat, with the suffering of men and the sorrow of women, the generation of Lincoln and Grant purchased for us peace and union, it paid for itself over and over again by what it left to us—not merely a reunited land, not merely a land in which freedom was a fact instead of only a boast, but above all the right as Americans to feel within us the lift toward lofty things which must come to those who know that their fathers and forefathers have in the supreme crisis entirely shown themselves fit to rank among the men of all time. ”

“ I must govern my action by the laws of the land, which I am sworn to administer, and which differentiate any case in which the Government of the United States is a party from all other cases whatsoever. These laws are enacted for the benefit of the whole people, and can not and must not be construed as permitting discrimination against some of the people. I am President of all the people of the United States, without regard to creed, color, birthplace, occupation, or social condition. My aim is to do equal and exact justice as among them all. ”

“ You left us also the most splendid example of what brotherhood really means; for in your careers you showed in practical fashion that the only safety in our American life lies in spurning the accidental distinctions which sunder one man from another, and in paying homage to each man only because of what he essentially is; in stripping off the husks of occupation, of position, of accident, until the soul stands forth revealed, and we know the man only because of his worth as a man. ”

“ When I speak to you of the Pacific Slope, to you of the new Northwest, whose cities are seated here by the Sound, I speak to people abounding in their youth and their virile manhood, who do not fear to grasp opportunity as the opportunity comes, and who weigh slight risk but lightly in the balance when on the other side of the scale comes the greatness of triumph, the greatness of acquisition. We took Alaska thirty-five years ago, and at last we have begun to wake up to the heritage that thereby we have handed over to our children. ”

“ Great good has come from the development of our railroad system; great good has been done by the individuals and corporations that have made that development possible; and in return good is done to them, and not harm, when they are required to obey the law. Ours is a government of liberty by, through and under the law. No man is above it and no man is below it. The crime of cunning, the crime of greed, the crime of violence, are all equally crimes, and against them all alike the law must set its face. This is not and never shall be a government either of a plutocracy or of a mob. ”

“ Every man aboard the Olympia must feel that on him rests a double duty, to see to it that the ship’s name shall be for evermore a symbol of victory and of glory to all the people of our country. Nothing pleases me more than to see to-day for myself how high is the standard of the enlisted men of the United States Navy. I do not believe that our navy has ever been at a higher point of efficiency. Month by month the already high standard is being raised even higher. All alike share in the duty, and share in the honor which comes if the duty is well done. ”

“ No one can too strongly insist upon the elementary fact that you can not build the superstructure of public virtue save on private virtue. The sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to make that whole, the State, the representative and exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made through the decency, public and private, of the average citizen.
It is absolutely essential if we are to have the proper standard of public life that promise shall be square with performance. A lie is no more to be excused in politics than out of politics. ”

“ Permit me to thank you as an American citizen for the admirable way in which you have vindicated the majesty of the law by your recent action in reference to lynching. I feel, my dear sir, that you have made all men your debtors who believe, as all far-seeing men must, that the well-being, indeed the very existence, of the Republic depends upon that spirit of orderly liberty under the law which is as incompatible with mob violence as with any form of despotism. Of course mob violence is simply one form of anarchy ”

“ I could not resist the chance that was offered me to stop and dedicate this monument, for great though we now regard Abraham Lincoln, my countrymen, the future will put him on an even higher pinnacle than we have put him. In all history I do not believe that there is to be found an orator whose speeches will last as enduringly as certain of the speeches of Lincoln; and in all history, with the sole exception of the man who founded this Republic, I do not think there will be found another statesman at once so great and so single-hearted in his devotion to the weal of his people. ”

“ In the same way Leonard Wood worked in Cuba. Put down there to do an absolutely new task, to take a people of a different race, a different speech, a different creed, a people just emerging from the hideous welter of a war, cruel and sanguinary beyond what we in this fortunate country can readily conceive, to take a people down in the depths of poverty and misery, just recovering from suffering which makes one shudder to think of, a people untrained utterly and absolutely in self-government, and fit them for it ”

“ Our people intend to abide by the Monroe Doctrine and to insist upon it as the one sure means of securing the peace of the Western Hemisphere. The navy offers us the only means of making our insistence upon the Monroe Doctrine anything but a subject of derision to whatever nation chooses to disregard it. We desire the peace which comes as of right to the just man armed; not the peace granted on terms of ignominy to the craven and the weakling.
It is not possible to improvise a navy after war breaks out. The ships must be built and the men trained long in advance. ”

“ I hope sincerely that a century hence it will seem equally incredible to the American of that generation that there should be corruption and venality in public life. We can divide, and must divide, on party lines as regards certain questions; as regards the deepest, as regards the vital questions, we can not afford to divide, and I have the right to challenge the best effort of every American worthy of the name to putting down by every means in his power corruption in private life, and above all corruption in public life. ”

“ Leadership is of avail only so far as there is wise and resolute public sentiment behind it.
In the long run, then, it depends upon us ourselves, upon us the people as a whole, whether this Government is or is not to stand in the future as it has stood in the past; and my faith that it will show no falling off is based upon my faith in the character of our average citizenship. The one supreme duty is to try to keep this average high. To this end it is well to keep alive the memory of those men who are fit to serve as examples of what is loftiest and best in American citizenship. ”

“ Whenever either corporation, labor union, or individual disregards the law or acts in a spirit of arbitrary and tyrannous interference with the rights of others, whether corporations or individuals, then where the Federal Government has jurisdiction, it will see to it that the misconduct is stopped, paying not the slightest heed to the position or power of the corporation, the union or the individual, but only to one vital fact—that is, the question whether or not the conduct of the individual or aggregate of individuals is in accordance with the law of the land. ”

“ Moreover, every friend of liberty, every believer in self-government, every idealist who wished to see his ideals take practical shape, wherever he might be in the world, knew that the success of all in which he most believed was bound up with the success of the Union armies in this great struggle. I confidently predict that when the final judgment of history is recorded it will be said that in no other war of which we have written record was it more vitally essential for the welfare of mankind that victory should rest where it finally rested. ”

“ His protest of concern for workingmen is outrageous in its impudent falsity; for if the political institutions of this country do not afford opportunity to every honest and intelligent son of toil, then the door of hope is forever closed against him. The anarchist is everywhere not merely the enemy of system and of progress, but the deadly foe of liberty. If ever anarchy is triumphant, its triumph will last for but one red moment, to be succeeded for ages by the gloomy night of despotism. ”

“ We do not wish to see any Old World military power grow up on this continent, or to be compelled to become a military power ourselves. The peoples of the Americas can prosper best if left to work out their own salvation in their own way.
The work of upbuilding the navy must be steadily continued. No one point of our policy, foreign or domestic, is more important than this to the honor and material welfare, and above all to the peace, of our Nation in the future. Whether we desire it or not, we must henceforth recognize that we have international duties no less than international rights. ”

“ In any serious crisis the United States must rely for the great mass of its fighting men upon the volunteer soldiery who do not make a permanent profession of the military career; and whenever such a crisis arises the deathless memories of the Civil War will give to Americans the lift of lofty purpose which comes to those whose fathers have stood valiantly in the forefront of the battle.
The merit system of making appointments is in its essence as democratic and American as the common school system itself. ”

“ I am perfectly well aware that as Chief Justice Marshall says: “The power of taxation is the power of destruction.” But this applies to every species of property. If demagogues or ignorant enthusiasts who are misled by demagogues could succeed in destroying wealth, they would of course simply work the ruin of the entire community; and first of all, of the unfortunates for whom they profess to feel an especial interest. But the very existence of unreasoning hostility to wealth should make us all the more careful in seeing that wealth does nothing to justify such hostility. ”

“ I want to see each young fellow able to do a man’s work in the world, and of a type which will not permit imposition to be practiced upon him. I want to see him too strong of spirit to submit to wrong, and, on the other hand, ashamed to do wrong to others. I want to see each man able to hold his own in the rough work of actual life outside, and also, when he is at home, a good man, unselfish in dealing with wife, or mother, or children. ”

“ The chief factor in the success of each man—wage-worker, farmer, and capitalist alike—must ever be the sum total of his own individual qualities and abilities. Second only to this comes the power of acting in combination or association with others. Very great good has been and will be accomplished by associations or unions of wage-workers, when managed with forethought, and when they combine insistence upon their own rights with law-abiding respect for the rights of others. The display of these qualities in such bodies is a duty to the nation no less than to the associations themselves. ”