In the Civil War, Grant and Sherman and Farragut rendered incalculable service; but in the last analysis it was the average man in the ranks who made the army.
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.
gutenberg.org
The right type of leader can guide and help him—in short, can lead him; but he must himself be trusted to see to it that his leadership is right, and if he has not the right stuff in him, then no leadership will avail him or any of us.
It will be made by the average citizen, and whether it stands high or low will and must depend upon the character of the average citizenship.
In this country of ours the Government can no more rise higher than those who make it than a stream can rise higher than its source.
With this character, whether the great opportunity comes or not, you can count upon so bearing yourselves that your children will bless you for having done all that was in your power to bring them up to an honored name.
No amount of skill, perseverance, energy, or genius can win either the great or the small prizes of life unless back of them lie character and the courage of moral convictions.
You must do what is right to your family and your neighbors before you can help the State.
You must pull your own weight first before you can do more than be a passenger in the boat.
There is no use whatever in having lofty ambitions or great schemes for helping mankind if you are not able in the first place to keep yourself and your own family decently fed, clothed, and housed.
Real success consists in doing one’s duty well in the path where one’s life is led.
If the soldier feels that he has done that, then he has a right to feel that his career has been honorable and successful, and that his children’s children will be proud of him.
Success from the soldier’s standpoint, if an army is to rank as one of the great armies of all time, must mean that whether the man carries sword or musket, whether he looks after the mules or the commissary, he does his duty up to the…
In other words, to the Grand Army man success, in the highest and truest acceptation of the word, means the full performance of duty in whatever position Providence has assigned the man to whom the duty comes.
The Grand Army in its organization is typically and fundamentally American, because in the Grand Army every man from lieutenant-general to drummer boy is judged not by his position, but by the way he discharges or discharged his duty while…
I feel that if we have it the chances are that we will not need it; but that if we do not have it, we might find that our need for it was vital.
We must so handle ourselves that no weak power which is behaving itself shall have cause to fear us; and no strong power of any kind shall be able to oppress or wrong us.
We must do our duty to others, and we must do our duty to ourselves.
The only thing we can decide is whether, being great, we will do well or do ill.
You of Texas by what your forefathers did and what you have done have helped in making this Nation so that it is impossible not to be great.
The mother who has brought up as they should be brought up a family of young children is entitled to such respect as no other person in the community is entitled to.
There is only one of my fellow-citizens to whom I will touch my hat quicker than to the soldier; and that is the mother, because I think she has a little harder time of it.
Surely you must not rob your sons of the right to feel in their turn the same pride that you now feel in the power to overcome difficulty, the power to work, the power of wresting triumph out of danger.
You are proud to remember and have them remember the days of toil, of peril, of effort, the days when you had to risk life and endure every form of hardship and of labor, when you had in you the spirit that made you endure it, that made…
Bring up the boy and girl alike with the understanding that life is not generally soft, is not generally easy, that there will be plenty of rough times, and that what they have to show is not the spirit that avoids difficulties and…
When you spare the child that which alone will enable it to conquer in after life, you are not giving it a blessing; you are doing it the greatest wrong in your power.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
