Teddy Roosevelt

I congratulate you upon all the crops, but especially upon the children.

Most of all I have enjoyed seeing you, the men and women of California.

I should be ashamed of you if you were not

If he is worth his salt he will work.

Our government has so far escaped the twin dangers of the older republics, government by a plutocracy or government by a mob, either of them absolutely alien to American ideals.

Constitution, laws,—they are good things, indispensable things, to have right, but you must have the men behind them or they will amount to but little.

The thing that has impressed me more than anything else in addressing the different audiences is that a good American is a good American in whatever part of this country he lives.

I want to see the average American citizen be in the future as he has been in the past, a decent man, doing no wrong.

I pity no man because he has to work.

It is the fact of doing the work well that counts, not the kind of work, as long as that work is honorable.

This is to be my last day in California, and I leave the State with the liveliest appreciation of the courtesy with which I have been received.

I envy the man who has a work worth doing and does it well;

I ask that we keep in mind not only our own interests, but the interests of our children.

It has always seemed to me that we should profit by the lessons that they taught, not merely in war, but in peace.

I have been astonished and delighted with your extraordinary success in so many different types of industries—mining, agriculture of so many kinds, manufacturing, your wonderful commerce.

I do not care how moral a man is, if his morality is only good while he sits at home in his own parlor, you can do nothing with him.

You see, in '98 we had a difficulty from which you were wholly free in '61, because with us there was not enough war to go around.

I want to say a word to the teachers.

One lesson of that brotherhood is the self-respect that respects others.

I believe in you with all my heart and I believe that the century that is opening contains the promise of the greatest achievement for this nation that any nation has ever enjoyed since the dim days when history dawned.

It is particularly a pleasure to be in a State already great, and yet with an infinitely greater future before it.

Instead of the life of ease I preach to all worthy to be called men, the life of work, the life of endeavor.

I believe in play and I believe in work.

If a man does his duty he is a good citizen and we should be proud of him.

But pleased though I am to see your abounding material prosperity, the products of your soil, the thing I am most pleased with is you yourselves, the men and women.