Teddy Roosevelt

I need not say that the United States not only has no purpose of aggression upon any republic, continental or insular, to the south of us, but has the friendliest feeling toward them, and desires nothing save their progress and prosperity.

It has nothing to do with parties or partisanship, and is being carried on with absolute disregard to all merely political considerations; with regard only to efficiency, honesty, and economy.

The work of building the canal is a great American work, in which the whole American people are interested.

The administration is steadily becoming better and more effective, from the hygienic as well as from every other standpoint.

They amount to nothing one way or the other, so far as achieving results is concerned; and their complaints and outcries need never detain us.

And just the same thing is true in any great enterprise in civil life; there are always weaklings who get trampled down or lose heart, and there are always people who listen to their complaints.

But our people as a whole possess not only faith, but resolution, and are of too virile fibre to be swept one way or the other by mere sensationalism.

But do not accuse him of corruption unless you know that he is corrupt; and if you know that he is corrupt, if you have good reason to believe that he is corrupt, then refuse under any plea of party expediency, under any consideration, to…

If you think he is acting in a way so misguided that he will bring ruin to the State or Nation, say so.

So far from asking that you be lenient in your judgment of any public man, I hold that you are recreant to duty if you are thus lenient.

But if you accuse, either specifically or in loose general declamation, all men of being corruptionists, you by just so much weaken your own strength when it becomes necessary to assail the genuine corruptionist.

In our legislative bodies, in our National Congress, if you find that any man is corrupt, you are not to be excused if you do not hunt him out of public life, whether he is of one party or whether he is of another.

To accuse an honest man of being a thief is to gladden the heart of every thief in the Nation.

When we express moral reprobation let us be sure that we know the facts and then that we say only exactly what is true.

There are plenty of men with whom we differ radically, plenty of men of whom we radically disapprove, as to whom it is right and necessary that we should express that disapprobation; but beware of expressing it in terms that imply moral…

The surest way of blunting the public conscience in dealing with corruption is to confuse the public mind as to who is corrupt and who is not.

We can afford to consider in a public servant nothing but the question of his honesty or dishonesty when once that question is raised.

The minute that there arises a question of corruption in public life, if we have any sense of loyalty to the Union and its institutions, all political lines vanish at once.

The Republic will go down, our democratic institutions will be a failure, if the moral sense of the people grows so blunted that they will accept anything else, whether brilliancy or loyalty of party service, or any other deed or quality…

The man who in political life, the man who in business life, by chicanery or by corruption in any shape or form, does or achieves what could not be done or achieved save by or through chicanery or corruption, stands on the same level with…

Too often we have seen public sentiment condoning the acts both of the thief and the liar (I am using ugly words, gentlemen, and I am using them because I wish to denote in the sharpest and in the most ugly fashion ugly attributes), when…

In the second place, to remember that second only in iniquity, second only in the injury done to the Republic, to the wrong of the man who acts corruptly, comes the wrong of the man who wantonly accuses the honest man of corruption.

We have to war against the same evil tendencies in our own souls; we have to strive to give expression to the same aspirations toward righteousness, toward honor.

It means a great deal to me to meet all of you personally, with all that you gentlemen typify in the world of politics, the world of business, and that world of ethical effort which can alone render either business or politics noble.

No man could meet with such a reception as you have given me to-day, no man could see your city, could see your people, could address such an audience as I have addressed, and not be a better citizen afterward.