Teddy Roosevelt

That is utterly unjust, and the people themselves, and the representatives of the people in public life, who have failed to provide the necessary means in advance—they are responsible when disaster comes.

Until we thus prepare we can make up our minds that we are ourselves responsible for any disaster that occurs to any army that the United States may raise in the future; not the man who may be at the head of the Army at the time.

And until we have provision for an ample corps of doctors in the Army so that they can be practiced in time of peace we will not have prepared as we ought to prepare for the possibilities of war.

Too much praise can not be given to those who have done this work in Panama.

Before making the dirt fly it was necessary to get the microbes under; it was necessary to grapple with the mosquitoes; necessary to eradicate disease.

There is not a more exacting profession; there is not a profession which makes greater demands upon those following it, and which more entitles them to the gratitude of mankind, than is the profession which is yours.

On any other conditions we shall not be able to get men of the right type to do the work; and this means that on any other conditions we shall ensure, if not failure, at least delay, scandal, and inefficiency in the task of digging the…

But I ask that they be decently paid, and that their hands be upheld as long as they act decently.

I court the fullest, most exhaustive, and most searching investigation of any act of theirs, and if any one of them is ever shown to have done wrong his punishment shall be exemplary.

Men fit for the work will not undertake it unless they are well paid.

It matters not whether those guilty of these false accusations utter them in mere wanton recklessness and folly or in a spirit of sinister malice to gratify some personal or political grudge.

The only discredit inhering in these false accusations is to those who originate and give them currency, and who, to the extent of their abilities, thereby hamper and obstruct the completion of the great work in which both the honor and…

Every specific charge relating to jobbery, to immorality, or to inefficiency, from whatever source it has come, has been immediately investigated, and in no single instance have the statements of these sensation-mongers and the interested…

If this high standard of efficiency and integrity can be maintained in the future at the same level which it has now reached, the construction of the Panama Canal will be one of the feats to which the people of this Republic will look back…

Nothing else counts for as much in welding together into one compact mass of citizenship the different race stocks which here are being fused into a new nationality.

Incidentally to its other work the public school does more than any other institution of any kind, sort, or description to Americanize the child of foreign-born parents who comes here when young, or is born here.

The public schools are not merely the educational centres for the mass of our people, but they are the factories of American citizenship.

But while fully admitting this, it remains true that most important of all is the education of the common school.

It would be the greatest misfortune if we ever permitted such a warped and twisted view of democracy to obtain as would be implied in a denial of the advantage that comes to the whole Nation from the high education of the few who are able…

It has been my good fortune that all of my children have received, or are receiving, a portion of their education in the public schools of this District, in this city; and I feel that the advantage to them is incalculable.

The question of the tariff, the currency, or even the regulation of railroad rates, are all subordinate to the great basic moral movements which mean the preservation of the individual in his or her relations to the home; because if the…

It is eminently worth while to try to prevent those boys becoming criminals, to try to prevent their being menaces to and expenses and sores in society, while there is a chance of reforming them.

That applies peculiarly to those boys who tend to drift off into courses which mean that unless they are checked they will be formidable additions to the criminal population when they grow older.

But speaking generally, the chance of success lies in working with the boy and not with the man.

I was even more impressed than I have been all along, ever since I have grown up, with the fact that if you are going to do anything permanent for the average man you have got to begin before he is a man.