Theodore Roosevelt

“ In closing I want to say one word upon success in life, upon the success that each of us should strive for. It is a great mistake, oh, such a great mistake, to measure success merely by that which glitters from without, or to speak of it in terms which will mislead those about us, and especially the younger people about us, as to what success really is. There must, of course, be for success a certain material basis. I should think ill of any man here who did not wish to leave his children a little better off and not a little worse off materially than he was. ”

“ On the contrary, we treat the record of what we have done in the past as incitement to do even better in the future. We believe that the progress that we have made may be taken as a measure of the progress we shall continue to make if the people again intrust the Government of the Nation to our hands. We do not stand still. We press steadily forward toward the goal of moral and material well-being for our own people, of just and fearless dealing toward all other peoples, in the interest not merely of this country, but of mankind. ”

“ Of course, all of us are agreed that a prime national need is the need of commemorating the memories of the men who did greatly, thought highly, who fought, suffered, endured, for the Nation. It is a great thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them. If we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the only homage which is really worthy of them. ”

“ We must have a basis of material prosperity before any community, whether State, municipality, or nation, can develop itself, can rise in any degree. There must in the community as in the individual be first as a basis the material prosperity; but woe to the community, woe to the individual, that accepts such material prosperity as the be-all and the end-all of its life. In the world at large, and especially in this Nation, we have been passing through an era of materialism. ”

“ Toward all other nations, large and small, our attitude must be one of cordial and sincere friendship. We must show not only in our words but in our deeds that we are earnestly desirous of securing their goodwill by acting toward them in a spirit of just and generous recognition of all their rights. But justice and generosity in a nation, as in an individual, count most when shown not by the weak but by the strong. While ever careful to refrain from wronging others, we must be no less insistent that we are not wronged ourselves. ”

“ But after all, hard though it is to rise to the supreme height of self-sacrifice and of effort at a time of crisis that is short, to rise to it for a single great effort—it is harder yet to rise to the level of a crisis when that crisis takes the form of needing constant, patient, steady work, month after month, year after year, when, too, it does not end after a terrible struggle in a glorious day—when it means months of gloom and effort steadfastly endured, and triumph wrested only at the very end. ”

“ The fate of the twentieth century will in no small degree—I ask you to think of this from the standpoint of the world—the fate of the twentieth century as it bears on the world will in no small degree depend upon the type of citizenship developed on this Continent. Surely such a thought must thrill us with the resolute purpose so to bear ourselves that the name American shall stand as the symbol of just, generous, and fearless treatment of all men and all nations. Let us be true to ourselves, for we can not then be false to any man. ”

“ We make our appeal to no class and to no section, but to all good citizens, in whatever part of the land they dwell, and whatever may be their occupation or worldly condition. We have striven both for civic righteousness and for national greatness; and we have faith to believe that our hands will be upheld by all who feel love of country and trust in the uplifting of mankind. We stand for enforcement of the law and for obedience to the law; our Government is a government of orderly liberty equally alien to tyranny and to anarchy ”

“ I wish to see courage, perseverance, the willingness to face work, to face, you men, if it is necessary, danger, the determination not to shrink back when temporarily beaten in life, as each one will be now and then, but to come up again and wrest triumph from defeat. I want to see you men strong men and brave men, and in addition I wish to see each man of you feel that his strength and his courage but make him the worse unless to that strength and courage are joined the qualities of tenderness toward those he loves, who are dependent upon him, and of right dealing with all his neighbors. ”

“ There have been other crises than those that culminated during the War for Independence and the great Civil War, there have been great deeds and great men at other periods of our national history, but there never has been another deed vital to the welfare of the Nation save the two—the deed of those who founded and the deed of those who saved the Republic. There never has been another man whose life has been vital to the Republic save Washington and Lincoln. ”

“ Within the limits defined by the National Constitution the National Administration has sought to secure to each man the full enjoyment of his right to live his life and dispose of his property and his labor as he deems best, so long as he wrongs no one else. It has shown in effective fashion that in endeavoring to make good this guarantee, it treats all men, rich or poor, whatever their creed, their color, or their birthplace, as standing alike before the law. Under our form of government the sphere in which the Nation as distinguished from the State can act is narrowly circumscribed ”

“ Surely we owe it to this Nation that we should have that Army of fifty thousand men able to manœuvre as an Army of fifty thousand men and able to render as good service as such as any army can render. We can never achieve that ideal unless we are willing as a Nation to spend the money so that the Army shall have the chance of being handled in time of peace in great masses by the men who will handle it in masses in time of war. ”

“ I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the South as I admire and respect and believe in and have faith in the men and women of the North. All of us alike, Northerners and Southerners, Easterners and Westerners, can best prove [236] our fealty to the Nation’s past by the way in which we do the Nation’s work in the present; for only thus can we be sure that our children’s children shall inherit Abraham Lincoln’s single-hearted devotion to the great unchanging creed that “righteousness exalteth a nation.” ”

“ They must give him a free hand, a fair field, and a cordial Godspeed, the two races working together for their mutual benefit and for the development of our common country. He must have liberty, equal opportunity to make his living, to earn his bread, to build his home. He must have justice, equal rights, and protection before the law. He must have the same political privileges; the suffrage should be based on character and intelligence for white and black alike. He must have the same public advantages of education; the public schools are for all the people, whatever their color or condition. ”

“ Washington was far too much of a patriot, had far too much love for his fellow-citizens, to try to teach them that they could govern themselves unless they could develop a sound and enlightened public opinion. No nation can permanently retain free government unless it can retain a high average of citizenship; and there can be no such high average of citizenship without a high average of education, using the word in its broadest and truest sense to include the things of the soul as well as the things of the mind. ”

“ I have now come down to this mighty State, this wonderful commonwealth, which borders on the Gulf, and I shall go away with the feeling that after all, while there are small differences among us, the fundamental fact is that wherever you find the average American, the average American is a pretty good man. It is our unity, not our divergency, that is the great fundamental fact of our national life. I shall go away a stronger and better American for having been in this State of strong and good Americans, this mighty commonwealth of Texas. ”

“ These forty-odd years have been the most prosperous years this Nation has ever seen; more prosperous years than any other nation has ever seen. Beyond question this prosperity could not have come if the American people had not possessed the necessary thrift, energy, and business intelligence to turn their vast material resources to account. But it is no less true that it is our economic policy as regards the tariff and finance which has enabled us as a nation to make such good use of the individual capacities of our citizens, and the natural resources of our country. ”

“ Yet, on the other hand, a nation prepared for war is a menace to mankind unless the national purpose is to treat other nations with good faith and justice. In any community it is neither the conscientious man who is a craven at heart, nor yet the bold and strong man without the moral sense, who is of real use to the community; it is the man who to strength and courage adds a realizing sense of the moral obligation resting upon him, the man who has not only the desire but the power to do his full duty by his neighbor and by the State. ”

“ It is equally true that the training can not be given you only from without unless you actively and earnestly seek to get the best possible benefit from it yourselves; that the best teachers, the best superiors can not supply wholly or more than in very small part the lack of that which is within you. No other body of men of your age in our country owes so much to the United States, to the flag that symbolizes this Nation, as you do. No other body of young men has on the average as great a chance as each of you has to lead a life of honor to himself and of benefit to the country at large. ”

“ It is a poor thing for a nation if it uses the memory of the past to excuse it for inaction or failure in the present. Keep it before yourselves ever that the very fact that you are proud of those who have gone before makes it incumbent upon you to leave a heritage of honor to those who are to come after you, and to train up those who are to come after you so that they can do their work in the world. ”

“ It is not merely unwise, it is contemptible, for a nation, as for an individual, to use high-sounding language to proclaim its purposes, or to take positions which are ridiculous if unsupported by potential force, and then to refuse to provide this force. If there is no intention of providing and of keeping the force necessary to back up a strong attitude, then it is far better not to assume such an attitude.
The steady aim of this Nation, as of all enlightened nations, should be to strive to bring ever nearer the day when there shall prevail throughout the world the peace of justice. ”

“ We owe that beauty, we owe the elevation of thought, of mind and soul, that come with association and belief in it, to the fact that there were a sufficient number of men who worked in the spirit that Ruskin prayed for—the spirit of doing work not for the sake of the fee, but for the sake of the work itself.
There are things in a nation’s life more important than beauty; but beauty is very important. ”

“ They had that love of country, that love of justice, that love of their fellow-men, without which power and resourceful efficiency but make a man a danger to his fellows. Yet, in addition thereto, they likewise possessed the power and the efficiency; for otherwise their high purpose would have been barren of result. They knew each how to act for himself, and yet each how to act with his fellows. They learned, as all the generation of the Civil War learned, that rare indeed is the chance to do anything worth doing by one sudden and violent effort. ”

“ My fellow-citizens, infinitely more important than any President, infinitely more important even than the reception to any President, is what is symbolized by seeing the men who fought in the Union army and the men who fought in the Confederate army standing mingled together, fellow-Americans, one in devotion and honor and loyalty to the country, shoulder to shoulder as fellow-citizens of the mightiest republic upon which the sun has ever shone. ”

“ Let us never forget our duty to help in uplifting the lowly, to shield from wrong the humble; and let us likewise act in a spirit of the broadest and frankest generosity toward all our brothers, all our fellow-countrymen; in a spirit proceeding not from weakness but from strength, a spirit which takes no more account of locality than it does of class or of creed; a spirit which is resolutely bent on seeing that the Union which Washington founded and which Lincoln saved from destruction shall grow nobler and greater throughout the ages. ”

“ Each is to be granted the full protection of the law, and each in turn is to be held to a strict obedience to the law; for no man is above it and no man below it. The humblest individual is to have his rights safeguarded as scrupulously as those of the strongest organization, for each is to receive justice, no more and no less. The problems with which we have to deal in our modern industrial and social life are manifold; but the spirit in which it is necessary to approach their solution is simply the spirit of honesty, of courage, and of common-sense. ”

“ Now fix clearly in your minds two facts at the outset. As with everything else mundane, when you get that supervisory and regulatory power on behalf of the Nation you will not have cured all the evils that existed and you will not equal the expectations of the amiable but ill-regulated enthusiast who thinks that you ought to have cured all those evils. A measure of good will come, some good will be done, some injustice will have been prevented; but we shall be a long way from the millennium. ”

“ Take care the next generation is able to rise level to its duty. You can not make it rise level if you do not give it the proper training. Remember always that this life is certain to contain much that is hard, much that is unpleasant. It is not a kindness to the children, it is a curse, if you train them so that they can not meet any need that arises. I do not believe that we ought ever to try to delude ourselves with the thought that we can make life easy, effortless, and yet keep it worth having. For a nation as for an individual the life is the life of effort. ”

“ The expenditures of the Nation have been managed in a spirit of economy as far removed from waste as from niggardliness; and in the future every effort will be continued to secure an economy as strict as is consistent with efficiency. Once more our opponents have promised what they can not or should not perform. The prime reason why the expenses of the Government have increased of recent years is to be found in the fact that the people, after mature thought, have deemed it wise to have certain new forms of work for the public undertaken by the public. ”