"The American people abhor a vacuum."
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Quote collection
Theodore Roosevelt quotes (page 36 of 39)
778 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"After the war, and until the day of his death, his position on almost every public question was either mischievous or ridiculous, and usually both."
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"A revolution is sometimes necessary, but if revolutions become habitual the country in which they take place is going down-hill"
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"There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, orKnights oftheIsoscelesTriangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another."
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"I was a reasonably good student in college ... My chief interests were scientific. When I entered college, I was devoted to out-of-doors natural history, and my ambition was to be a scientific man of the Audubon, or Wilson, or Baird, or Coues type-a man like Hart Merriam, or Frank Chapman, or Hornaday, to-day."
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"We face the future with our past and our present as guarantors of our promises; and we are content to stand or to fall by the record which we have made and are making."
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"War with evil; but show no spirit of malignity toward the man who may be responsible for the evil. Put it out of his power to do wrong."
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"The president is that invisible force that makes a school of fish suddenly change direction, so that everyone 'ohhs' and 'ahhs' at the glimmering mass and only later wonders what makes them move in that way. I read somewhere-_Harper's_, I'm fairly certain-that the fish are only avoiding pockets of extra cold water."
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"The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows."
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"... looked at from the standpoint of the ultimate result, there was little real difference to the Indian whether the land was taken by treaty or by war. ... No treaty could be satisfactory to the whites, no treaty served the needs of humanity and civilization, unless it gave the land to the Americans as unreservedly as any successful war."
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"It may be that at some time in the dim future of the race the need for war will vanish: but that time is yet ages distant. As yet no nation can hold its place in the world, or can do any work really worth doing, unless it stands ready to guard its right with an armed hand."
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"In name we had the Declaration of Independence in 1776; but we gave the lie by our acts to the words of the Declaration of Independence until 1865; and words count for nothing except in so far as they represent acts."
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"Don't hit at all if you can help it; don't hit a man if you can possibly avoid it; but if you do hit him, put him to sleep."
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"Cowardice in a race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin."
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"No man can do both effective and decent work in public life unless he is a practical politician on the one hand, and a sturdy believer in Sunday-school politics on the other. He must always strive manfully for the best, and yet, like Abraham Lincoln, must often resign himself to accept the best possible."
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"The Bad Lands grade all the way from those that are almost rolling in character to those that are so fantastically broken in form and so bizarre in color as to seem hardly properly to belong to this earth."
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"I would a great deal rather be anything, say professor of history, than vice president."
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"The only trouble with the movement for the preservation of our forests is that it has not gone nearly far enough, and was not begun soon enough."
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"The sons of all of us will pay in the future if we of the present do not do justice in the present."
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"McKinley shows all the background of a chocolate eclair."
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