The best work for our uplifting must be done by ourselves, and yet with brotherly kindness for our neighbor.

The man who lies down, who will not try to walk, has become a mere cumberer of the earth’s surface.

On the other hand, it is equally true that the prosperity of any of us can best be attained by measures that will promote the prosperity of all.

Voluntary action by individuals in the form of associations of any kind for mutual betterment or mutual advantage often offers a way to avoid alike the dangers of State control and the dangers of excessive individualism.

I really do not know which quality is most productive of evil to mankind in the long run, hardness of heart or softness of head.

It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples.

It is a law of our intellectual development that the greatest and most important truths, when once we have become thoroughly familiar with them, often because of that very familiarity grow dim in our minds.

It seems to me that the simple acceptance of this fundamental fact of American life, this acknowledgment that the law of work is the fundamental law of our being, will help us to start aright in facing not a few of the problems that…

As regards internal affairs, it should teach us the prime need of remembering that, after all has been said and done, the chief factor in any man’s success or failure must be his own character—that is, the sum of his common-sense, his…

Besides each one of us working individually, all of us have got to work together.

To be a good husband or good wife, a good neighbor and friend, to be hard-working and upright in business and social relations, to bring up many healthy children—to be and to do all this is to lay the foundations of good citizenship as…

We can not possibly do our best work as a nation unless all of us know how to act in combination as well as how to act each individually for himself.

They sought for true success, and therefore they did not seek ease.

They knew that success comes only to those who lead the life of endeavor.

But it is not possible ever to ensure prosperity merely by law.

Then let us make it equally evident that we will not tolerate injustice being done to us in return.

Poverty is a bitter thing; but it is not as bitter as the existence of restless vacuity and physical, moral, and intellectual flabbiness, to which those doom themselves who elect to spend all their years in that vainest of all vain…

The wilfully idle man, like the wilfully barren woman, has no place in a sane, healthy, and vigorous community.

Our ancestors, who were at once the strongest and the most liberty-loving among all the peoples who had been thrust out into new continents, were the first to revolt against this system; and the lesson taught by their success has been…

We have but little room among our people for the timid, the irresolute, and the idle; and it is no less true that there is scant room in the world at large for the nation with mighty thews that dares not to be great.

Exactly as infinitely the happiest woman is she who has borne and brought up many healthy children, so infinitely the happiest man is he who has toiled hard and successfully in his life-work.

Throughout our history the success of the home-maker has been but another name for the upbuilding of the nation.

At last we grew to accept as axiomatic the two facts of national union and local and personal freedom.

They have shown the qualities of daring, endurance, and far-sightedness, of eager desire for victory and stubborn refusal to accept defeat, which go to make up the essential manliness of the American character.

Above all, they have recognized in practical form the fundamental law of success in American life—the law of worthy work, the law of high, resolute endeavor.