Teddy Roosevelt

There is no royal road to good government.

I think I was a fairly good American a week ago when I came into your State, but I am a better one now.

Let me thank you for coming out to see me, and say how I have enjoyed coming here.

I do not want you to turn out prigs; I do not want you to turn out the self-conscious.

I have come to California; I have seen; and I have been conquered by California's citizens and California's Governor.

It is a fine thing to have before a body of students men who by their practice have rendered it unnecessary that they should preach

With decency there must go the power practically to apply it in life, practically to work it out, and to work it out for the benefit of others as well as for one's self.

I am glad to have the chance of acknowledging my obligations to him, and I am also glad that when I ask you to strive toward productive scholarship, toward productive citizenship, I can use the president of the university as an example.

There is no patent recipe for getting good citizenship.

The more efficient a man is the more dangerous he is if that efficiency is not guided by the proper type of spirit, by the proper sense of moral responsibility.

There is nothing more practical in the end than the preservation of beauty, than the preservation of anything that appeals to the higher emotions in mankind.

It speaks well for our nation that men and women should desire during their lives to devote the fortunes which they were able to acquire or to inherit because of our system of government, to objects so entirely worthy and so entirely…

It will be a bad day for this country and a worse day for all educative institutions in this country if ever such a call is made, and the men of college training do not feel it peculiarly incumbent upon them to respond.

No law that the wit of man has ever devised ever has made or ever will make the fool wise, the coward brave, or the weakling strong.

I have enjoyed being in California for the last week, and it has been the greatest possible pleasure.

There are no other trees anywhere like the giant Sequoias; nowhere else is there a more beautiful forest than that which clothes the western slope of the Sierra.

There is but one real way in which any man can be helped, and that is by teaching him to help himself.

It would be hard to overestimate the amount of good work done by the Young Men's Christian Associations and the Young Women's Christian Associations.

The Y. M. C. A. stands for so much because it represents the work of men and women who to a generous enthusiasm for their fellows, to a lofty ideal of service for the Giver of good, and for all mankind, join the power to realize that ideal…

Where the individuals and associations of individuals cannot preserve them, the State, and, if necessary, the nation, should step in and see to their preservation.

I want to see you play hard while you play, and when you work do not play at all.

We must have a first-class navy.

I shall only say how glad I am to be here, bid you welcome with all my heart, and say how thoroughly I believe in you, and that I am a better American for being among you.

I am, oh, so glad to be here.

To pin those cards up there is as much out of place as if you tacked so many tin cans up there.