We do not have to avoid definite and conclusive committal on the most important issue which has recently been before the people, and which may at any time in the near future be before them again.
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
Assuredly it is unwise to change the policies which have worked so well and which are now working so well.
Never has the administration of the Government been on a cleaner and higher level; never has the public work of the Nation been done more honestly and efficiently.
In dealing with the great organizations known as trusts, we do not have to explain why the laws were not enforced, but to point out that they actually have been enforced, and that legislation has been enacted to increase the effectiveness…
In such a fundamental matter as the enforcement of the law we do not have to depend upon promises, but merely to ask that our record be taken as an earnest of what we shall continue to do.
Our opponents, either openly or secretly, according to their several temperaments, now ask the people to trust their present promises in consideration of the fact that they intend to treat their past promises as null and void.
There is nothing experimental about the Government we ask the people to continue in power, for our performance in the past, our proved governmental efficiency, is a guarantee as to our promises for the future.
We who have been intrusted with power as public servants during the past seven years of administration and legislation now come before the people content to be judged by our record of achievement.
Effective government comes only as the result of the loyal co-operation of many different persons.
If next November my countrymen confirm at the polls the action of the convention you represent, I shall, under Providence, continue to work with an eye single to the welfare of all our people.
I congratulate you that it is your good fortune to be engaged in erecting a memorial to the great man who was equal to the great days—to the man and the men who showed by their lives that they were indeed doers of the word and not hearers…
The man must have the force, the power, the will to accomplish results, but he must have also the lift toward lofty things which shall make him incapable of striving for aught unless that for which he strives is something honorable and…
He must actually do things, not talk about doing them, least of all cavil at how they are accomplished by those who actually go down into the arena, and actually face the dust and the blood and the sweat, who actually triumphed in the…
A man, to amount to anything, must be practical.
What we as a people need more than aught else is the steady performance of the everyday duties of life, not with hope of reward, but because they are duties.
If we treat their great deeds as matters merely for idle boasting, not as spurring us on to effort, but as excusing us from effort, then we show that we are not worthy of our sires, of the people who went before us in the history of our…
If we show that the lives of the great men of the past have been to us incitements to do well in the present, then we have paid to them the only homage which is really worthy of them.
It is a great thing to commemorate their lives; but, after all, the worthy way to do so is to try to show by our lives that we have profited by them.
Yet I think that as a people we need more to learn the lesson of Valley Forge even than that of Gettysburg.
And they conquered, because they had in them the spirit that made them steadfast, not merely on an occasional great day, but day after day in the life of daily endeavor to do duty well.
Only men fit to rank with the great men of all time could have beaten back the mighty onslaught of that gallant and wonderful army of Northern Virginia, whose final supreme effort faded at the stone wall on Cemetery Ridge on that July day…
Only men with a touch of the heroic in them could have lasted out that three days’ struggle at Gettysburg.
It is a good thing that of these great landmarks of our history—Gettysburg and Valley Forge—one should commemorate a single tremendous effort and the other what we need, on the whole, much more commonly, and what I think is, on the whole…
Washington created the Republic, rose by statecraft to the highest position, and used that position only for the welfare of his fellows and for so long as his fellows wished him to keep it.
Lincoln saved the Union and lifted the cause of liberty higher than before.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
