Teddy Roosevelt

Inflation must be avoided; but some provision should be made that will insure a larger volume of money during the Fall and Winter months than in the less active seasons of the year; so that the currency will contract against speculation…

The evil does not consist in an inadequate volume of money, but in the rigidity of this volume, which does not respond as it should to the varying needs of communities and of seasons.

To fail to push forward all work on the Panama Canal would be as great a folly.

To cut down on the navy, for instance, would be a crime against the Nation.

Yet, in speaking of economy, I must in no wise be understood as advocating the false economy which is in the end the worst extravagance.

It is probably not unfair to say that many tens of thousands of volumes are published at which no human being ever looks and for which there is no real demand whatever.

As the business of the Nation grows, it is inevitable that there should be from time to time a legitimate increase in the number of officials, and this fact renders it all the more important that when offices become unnecessary they should…

I earnestly recommend to Congress the need of economy and to this end of a rigid scrutiny of appropriations.

Having in view even larger considerations of policy than those of a purely economic nature, it would, in my judgment, be well to endeavor to bring about closer commercial connections with the other peoples of this continent.

It should be considered whether it is not desirable that the tariff laws should provide for applying as against or in favor of any other nation maximum and minimum tariff rates established by the Congress, so as to secure a certain…

Much must depend, not merely on the needs, but on the desires, of the people as a whole; for needs and desires are not necessarily identical.

The United States should in this respect follow the policy of other nations by providing adequate national supervision of commercial interests which are clearly national in character.

There is need of a far stricter and more uniform regulation of the vast insurance interests of this country.

It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there be within the more there must be without.

The noblest of all forms of government is self-government; but it is also the most difficult.

I believe that our people are too sane, too self-respecting, too fit for self-government, ever to adopt such an attitude.

In other words, the standard we should establish is the standard of conduct, not the standard of occupation, of means, or of social position.

Unless we continue to keep a quick and lively sense of the great fundamental truth that our concern is with the individual worth of the individual man, this Government cannot permanently hold the place which it has achieved among the…

If such a spirit grows up in this Republic it will ultimately prove fatal to us, as in the past it has proved fatal to every community in which it has become dominant.

This inevitably brings about a tendency to treat each man not on his merits as an individual, but on his position as belonging to a certain class in the community.

To approach the questions which inevitably arise between them solely from the standpoint which treats each side in the mass as the enemy of the other side in the mass is both wicked and foolish.

Individual capitalist and individual wage-worker, corporation and union, are alike entitled to the protection of the law, and must alike obey the law.

Such conduct is just as reprehensible in one case as in the other, and all honest and farseeing men should join in warring against it wherever it becomes manifest.

We can get justice and right dealing only if we put as of paramount importance the principle of treating a man on his worth as a man rather than with reference to his social position, his occupation or the class to which he belongs.