Teddy Roosevelt

A sound body is a first-class thing, a sound mind is an even better thing, but the thing that counts for most in the individual as in the Nation is character—the sum of those qualities which make a man a good man and a woman a good woman.

We can not afford to let the generation that is coming grow up with the feeling that any quality will serve as a substitute for the old, essential qualities of manliness in a man and womanliness in a woman.

In the workaday world as it is, not only in war, but in private life and in public life alike, a man has to have toughness of fibre or he can not put into effect even the best of intentions.

General Slocum did his first great public service when the crisis called not primarily for the softer and milder, but for the sterner and harder virtues; and we can not afford in this day of material luxury, in this day when civilization…

I should think that any man looking at what is happening and what has happened abroad and in our own history during the past few years, must be indeed blind if he can not read that lesson clearly.

A first-class navy—first-class in point of size, above all first-class in point of efficiency of the individual units acting as units and in combination—is the surest and the cheapest guarantee of peace.

But above all, let us remember that to be aggressive in speech or act, and not to be armed, invites not merely disaster, but the contempt of mankind.

I trust that we shall never be aggressive unless aggression is not merely justified, but demanded; demanded either by our own self-respect or by the interests of mankind.

You do not need any of you to be told that in private life you will often resent an insult quite as much as an injury; and our public speakers and writers need to steadily keep before their minds the thought that no possible good can come…

You may notice that I said “insulting” as well as “injuring.” If there is one quality sometimes shown among us which is not commendable it is the habit of speaking loosely about foreign powers, foreign races.

More and more as we increase in strength I hope to see a corresponding increase in the sober sense of responsibility which shall prevent us either injuring or insulting any other people.

We owe this as an obligation to ourselves, we owe it as an obligation to all mankind.

It is absolutely essential that this Nation, if it is to hold the position in the future that it has held in the past, must act not only within but without its own borders in a spirit of justice and of large generosity toward all other…

The man who possesses those qualities and does not shape his course by a fundamental and underlying moral principle is a menace to each and all of us; and thrice foolish, thrice wicked is the other man who condones his moral shortcomings…

We can not afford as a people ever to forget for one moment that ability, farsightedness, iron resolution, perseverance, willingness to do and dare, are qualities to be admired only if they are put at the service of the right, at the…

The man who possesses great ability and great courage unaccompanied by the moral sense, a courage and ability unguided by the stern purpose to do what is just and upright, that man is rendered by the very fact of his courage and ability…

Now I want our people to remember the two sides of the lesson taught by General Slocum’s life.

We are able to point to General Slocum as the type of what a decent American citizen should be, as a man who was an example in his family life, an example in his business relations, an honest and upright public servant, no less than a…

I congratulate them upon the good fortune of having a fellow-citizen who in war and in peace alike served his people so well as to make it their duty, not so much to him as to themselves, to erect this statue that it might serve as a…

They raised it to the principle of righteousness, which alone can justify any war or any struggle.

But the first essential is the preservation of law and order, the suppression of violence by mobs or individuals.

But the union must obey the law just as the corporation must obey the law, just as every man, rich or poor, must obey the law.

I simply want to say that we want to be fair, to preserve the business interests of Chicago, realizing that the prosperity of our employers is our prosperity.

Acts of violence meet with the condemnation of the officials, both local and national, of our organization.

I believe that we are skilled workmen enough in our particular craft to demonstrate to our business men of Chicago that it is to their interest to employ us.