In every instance how the after events of history have falsified the predictions of the men of little faith!
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.
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In 1803, when we acquired the territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific, there were plenty of wise men who announced that we were acquiring a mere desert, that it was a violation of the Constitution to acquire it, and that…
It is curious how our fate as a Nation has often driven us forward toward greatness in spite of the protests of many of those esteeming themselves in point of training and culture best fitted to shape the Nation’s destiny.
You all did your part in winning them just as much as the men who actually fought.
There is not a workman in any of our yards who did his duty in connection with the guns, the armor plate, the turrets, the hulls, or anything, who has not his full right to a share in the credit of those victories.
Let us in our turn with equal courage, equal hardihood and manliness, carry on the task that our forefathers have intrusted to our hands; and let us resolve that we shall leave to our children and our children’s children an even mightier…
Base is the man who inflicts a wrong, and base is the man who suffers a wrong to be done him.
Our entire policy in irrigation, in forestry, in handling the public lands, should be in recognition of that truth, to favor in every way the man who wishes to take up a given area of soil and thereon to build a home in which he will rear…
It is a fundamental truth that the prosperity of any people is simply another term for the prosperity of the home-makers among that people.
The public appreciation of this fundamental truth that the water belongs to the people to be taken and put to beneficial use will wipe out many controversies which are at present so harmful to the development of the West.
The union of land and water under the national law has been recognized, and so has the fundamental proposition which necessarily underlies the prosperity of all communities in which irrigated agriculture is the chief industry, namely, that…
No man fit to be a public man will promise either the impossible or the improper; and if the demand is made that he shall do so it means putting a premium upon the unfit in public life.
There is no surer way of destroying the capacity for self-government in a people than to accustom that people to demanding the impossible or the improper from its public men.
On the other hand, the public that exacts a promise which ought not to be kept, or which can not be kept, is by just so much forfeiting its right to self-government.
In the first place, the man who makes a promise which he does not intend to keep and does not try to keep should rightly be adjudged to have forfeited in some degree what should be every man’s most precious possession—his honor.
A lie is no more to be excused in politics than out of politics.
It is absolutely essential if we are to have the proper standard of public life that promise shall be square with performance.
The sum of the parts is the whole, and if we wish to make that whole, the State, the representative and exponent and symbol of decency, it must be so made through the decency, public and private, of the average citizen.
The average man, the average woman must earn his or her living in one way or another, and I most emphatically do not advise any one to decline to do the humdrum, every-day duties because there may come a chance for the display of heroism.
Every man, every woman here should feel it incumbent upon him or her to welcome with joy the chance to render service to the country, service to our people at large, and to accept the rendering of the service as in itself ample repayment…
The difficulty and responsibility impose upon us the high duty of doing the work well, but they in no way excuse us for refusing to do it.
I hold that a great and masterful people forfeits its title to greatness if it shirks any work because that work is difficult and responsible.
I ask you to take that not as a conventional statement from the university platform, but to test it by thinking of the men whom you admire in our past history and seeing what are the qualities which have made you admire them, what are the…
I expect and demand in the name of the Nation much more from you who have had training of the mind than from those of mere wealth.
From those to whom much has been given we have Biblical authority to expect and demand much in return; and the most that can be given to any man is education.
Politicians like Teddy Roosevelt
