The highest gratitude is due to the officials of the State, to the officials of the city, and to the private individuals, clergymen, educators, philanthropists, and business men, who have spent their time and money and risked their lives…
Teddy Roosevelt
The Public Record
Theodore Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States, serving from 1901 to 1909. A member of the Republican Party, he was born on October 27, 1858, in New York. Roosevelt was a prominent leader of the Progressive Movement, advocating for domestic policies that included trust-busting, regulation of corporations, and conservation of natural resources. His administration is noted for significant reforms and the establishment of national parks and forests.
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In actual war there can be no greater or more effective heroism than was shown by those who stayed here at their posts; by those who, being away, came back; and by those who, having planned to go away, instantly gave up going away and…
I do not say anything unless I mean it, and I do not say anything to flatter any audience or speak well of them unless I think well of them, and would speak well of them anywhere.
But I want, on behalf of this Nation, the peace that comes, not to the coward who cringes for it, but to the just man armed who asks it as a right.
I want to see this Nation do as the individual men in the Nation, who respect themselves, should do, that is be scrupulously regardful of the rights of others and honestly endeavor to avoid all cause of difficulty with any one.
I do not intend, on behalf of the Nation, to take any position until I have carefully thought out whether that position will be advantageous to the Nation, but if I take it I am going to keep it, and I am going to keep it no matter what…
I do not want any Senator or any Congressman to vote for anything I favor just because I favor it; but I do not want him to vote against it just because I favor it.
And, Governor, as you have so well said, when a man is President, when he holds any public office, questions of a merely partisan character sink into absolute insignificance compared with the mighty questions upon which all good Americans…
Long delays of justice, abuses of the pardoning power, the sluggishness with which either court or attorney moves; all of those things count in bringing about the condition of affairs which produces lynch law.
If the law is reasonably speedy and reasonably sure it takes away one great excuse for lawlessness.
Of course, as we all know, offences must come; but I have endeavored to carry out the Scriptural injunction and to make it a matter of woe unto him by whom they come.
As the Judge has so well said, the minute a man becomes President he ceases being the President of a party and is the President of every man, woman, and child within the confines of the Nation.
In consequence, if he can keep the forces of justice at bay long enough—if he can secure one or two mistrials—gradually the popular interest evaporates and the criminal gets off.
I feel that the man who offends against the state occupies a position rather worse than that of any other criminal, from the very fact that he is a man who attacks everybody instead of just one person, so that it is not the special…
At present the right of appeal is in certain cases so abused as to make it a matter of the utmost difficulty to ultimately punish a man sufficiently rich or sufficiently influential to command really good legal talent.
It is unfortunate that we have permitted practices that were necessary three hundred years ago for the protection of innocent people to be elaborated, to be perverted, so that they become a means for allowing criminals to escape the…
It is right to remember the interests of the individual, but it is right also to remember the interests of that great mass of individuals embodied in the public, in the government.
When I say crimes against the state I not only refer to crimes like those of bribery and corruption committed by any public official, but I mean such a crime as murder, as any similar hideous misdeed, where the offence is not merely…
No greater service is being rendered the American public to-day than by those members of the legal profession whose great good fortune it has been to stand forth as prominently identified with the prosecution of crimes against the state.
Of course there is the possibility of error in every human affair; but speaking generally, the man accused of criminal wrong, especially the man accused of criminal wrong against the public, has every possible chance secured him; but the…
There are certain abuses in connection with our whole system of law to-day which the laymen can not remedy, but which I earnestly hope that the men of the law will themselves remedy.
Just as we have a right to judge the man of religious profession by the output that comes as a result of that profession, so we have a right to expect from the great profession of the law, from that which is perhaps the leading among the…
We honor you because when the call to arms came you treated material considerations as dross to be cast aside, not to be for one moment weighed in the balance, compared to the proud privilege of laying down everything, life itself, on the…
Let us go on with the work of the material upbuilding of this country; and at the same time remember that, vital though it is to have a good foundation of material well-being, yet it is only the foundation and upon it must be built the…
Shame to us if we treat the great deeds of the men of the past as excuses for laziness, or idleness, or shirking of duty on our part.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
