It is because the average American citizen, rich or poor, is of just this type that we have cause for our profound faith in the future of the Republic.

Lawlessness and connivance at law-breaking—whether the law-breaking take the form of a crime of greed and cunning or of a crime of violence—are destructive not only of order, but of the true liberties which can only come through order.

If alive to their true interests rich and poor alike will set their faces like flint against the spirit which seeks personal advantage by overriding the laws, without regard to whether this spirit shows itself in the form of bodily…

Let the watchwords of all our people be the old familiar watchwords of honesty, decency, fair dealing and common-sense.

The qualities denoted by these words are essential to all of us, as we deal with the complex industrial problems of to-day, the problems affecting not merely the accumulation but even more the wise distribution of wealth.

We ask no man’s permission when we require him to obey the law; neither the permission of the poor man nor yet of the rich man.

If all the existing instrumentalities of wealth could be abolished, the first and severest suffering would come among those of us who are least well off at present.

The wage-worker is well off only when the rest of the country is well off; and he can best contribute to this general well-being by showing sanity and a firm purpose to do justice to others.

In his turn the capitalist who is really a conservative, the man who has forethought as well as patriotism, should heartily welcome every effort, legislative or otherwise, which has for its object to secure fair dealing by capital…

For in no way is the stability of property better assured than by making it patent to our people that property bears its proper share of the burdens of the State; that property is handled not only in the interest of the owner, but in the…

In other words, legislation to be permanently good for any class must also be good for the Nation as a whole, and legislation which does injustice to any class is certain to work harm to the Nation.

Now, our having this sound currency system is of benefit to banks, of course, but it is of infinitely more benefit to the people as a whole, because of the healthy effect on business conditions.

Whatever is done, we can not afford to take any step backward or to cast any doubt upon the certain redemption in standard coin of every circulating note.

But each of us has the right to ask that he shall be protected from wrongdoing as he does his work and carries his burden through life.

There is no room in our healthy American life for the mere idler, for the man or the woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the duties which life ought to bring.

Life can mean nothing worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of duty, the achievement of results worth achieving.

To be bent under too great a load is bad; to be crushed by it is lamentable; but even in that there are possibilities that are glorious.

But to carry no load at all—there is nothing in that.

From the greatest to the smallest, happiness and usefulness are largely found in the same soul, and the joy of life is won in its deepest and truest sense only by those who have not shirked life’s burdens.

The men whom we most delight to honor in all this land are those who, in the iron years from ’61 to ’65, bore on their shoulders the burden of saving the Union.

To win success in the business world, to become a first-class mechanic, a successful farmer, an able lawyer or doctor, means that the man has devoted his best energy and power through long years to the achievement of his ends.

The man or woman who as bread-winner and home-maker, or as wife and mother, has done all that he or she can do, patiently and uncomplainingly, is to be honored; and is to be envied by all those who have never had the good fortune to feel…

The woman who has borne, and who has reared as they should be reared, a family of children, has in the most emphatic manner deserved well of the Republic.

It is a creed willingly learned only by men and women who, together with the softer virtues, possess also the stronger; who can do, and dare, and die at need, but who while life lasts will never flinch from their allotted task.

You have received from their hands a great inheritance, and you will leave an even greater inheritance to your children, and your children’s children, provided only that you practice alike in your private and your public lives the strong…