It is often quite as irritating to be patronized as to be plundered; as reformers have more than once discovered when the mass of the voters stolidly voted against them, and in favor of a gang of familiar scoundrels, chiefly because they had no sense of fellow-feeling with their would-be benefactors.
Roosevelt observes that people often resent being patronized as much as being exploited, sometimes preferring familiar corruption to condescending reformers.
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More from Teddy Roosevelt
One of the chief principles for which I have stood, and for which I now stand, and which I have always endeavored and always shall endeavor to reduce to action, is the genuine rule of the people.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood.
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