Teddy Roosevelt

If we make conditions such that the men of exceptional ability are able to secure marked benefits by the exercise of that ability, then we shall ourselves benefit somewhat.

If we penalize industry we will ourselves in the end have to pay a considerable part of the penalty.

The tissues of our industrial fabric are interwoven in such complex fashion that what strengthens or weakens part also strengthens or weakens the whole.

We have made the terms not merely hard, but often prohibitory, with the result that American capital goes into foreign countries, like Mexico, and is there used with immense advantage to the country in its development, while it can not go…

We should strive to secure such effective supervision over it, such power of regulation over it, as to enable us to guarantee that its activity will be exercised only in ways beneficial to the public.

Therefore, in my judgment, all corporations doing an interstate business, and this means the great majority of the largest corporations, should be held accountable to the Federal Government, because their accountability should be…

It should always be held accountable to some sovereign, and this accountability should be real and not sham.

Undoubtedly there is need of regulation by the Government, in the interest of the public, of these great corporations which in modern life have shown themselves to be the most efficient business implements, and which are, therefore, the…

Envy is, of course, merely a kind of crooked admiration; and we often see the very man who in public is most intemperate in his denunciation of wealth, in his private life most eager to obtain wealth, in no matter what fashion, and at no…

But at the same time we must not blind ourselves to what has been accomplished for good, and above all we must not lose our heads and become either hysterical or rancorous in grappling with what is bad.

There is every reason why we should be vigilant in searching out what is wrong and unflinchingly resolute in striving to remedy it.

There are many excellent people who shake their heads over the difficulties that as a nation we now have to face; but their melancholy is not warranted save in a very partial degree, for most of the things of which they complain are the…

There are no labor troubles where there is no work to be done by labor.

The problems which we of America have to face to-day are very serious, but we will do well to remember that after all they are only part of the price which we have to pay for the triumphs we have won, for the high position to which we have…

In this world of ours it is practically impossible to get success of any kind on a large scale without paying something for it.

I am sure that you would be pleased if you could hear the applause that greets, in any audience in the North, any allusion to the valor, the self-devotion, the fealty to right as God gave them to see the right, of the men who wore the gray…

I believe in organized labor; and I will do all that in me lies for the wage-worker, except to do wrong, and if I was willing to do that I would not be his true friend or any one else’s.

On the great majority of questions, on almost all the important questions that come up, what you want in public life is to find the public man who cares for the interests of the people, and who not only cares for them, but has the sense to…

If you will come down to bed-rock fact, the party differences are mighty small compared to the common interests that all of us have as Americans.

All Americans who are worthy the name feel an equal pride in the valor of those who fought on one side or the other, provided only that each did with all his strength and soul and mind his duty as it was given him to see his duty.

Men and women, don’t you think that I have the ancestral right to claim a proud kinship with those who showed their devotion to duty as they saw the duty, whether they wore the gray or whether they wore the blue?

It is my very great good fortune to have the right to claim that my blood is half Southern and half Northern; and I would deny the right of any man here to feel a greater pride in the deeds of every Southerner than I feel.

All those stories of the life of those days taught me what a real home life, a real neighbor life, was and should be.

I think we are very apt to learn most when neither we nor the people talking to us intend to teach anything.

We can afford to divide along lines that represent honest difference of opinion, but we can not afford to divide on the fundamental lines of cleavage that separate good citizens from bad citizens.