Theodore Roosevelt actually said...

Let's devote our best thought and best energies to finding some method of getting rid of any and all evils in the body politic.

Let us above all things beware in using the knife not to handle it so that it will be dangerous to the community even more than to the evil ...

To you alone it was given to face with victorious valor the one crisis in which not merely the nation's welfare but the nation's life was at...

Evils have come through our very prosperity, but in warring against the evil let us be exceeding careful not to war against the prosperity.