Teddy Roosevelt

Every man of us needs such help at some time or other, and each of us should be glad to stretch out his hand to a brother who stumbles.

This spirit of brotherhood recognizes of necessity both the need of self-help and also the need of helping others in the only way which ever ultimately does great good, that is, of helping them to help themselves.

First and foremost, your organization recognizes the vital need of brotherhood, the most vital of all our needs here in this great Republic.

Nowhere is it, or will it ever be, possible to supplant individual effort, individual initiative; but in addition to this there must be work in combination.

If, on the other hand, under Providence, our own energy and good sense bring prosperity to us, all will share in that prosperity.

If hard times come to the nation, whether as the result of natural causes or because they are invited by our own folly, all of us will suffer.

In the long run each section of the community will rise or fall as the community rises or falls.

Some may go up or go down further than others, but, disregarding special exceptions, the rule is that we must all share in common something of whatever adversity or whatever prosperity is in store for the nation as a whole.

When we undertake the impossible, we too often fail to do anything at all.

We can do a great deal when we undertake, soberly, to do the possible.

There is, first, the wrong of failing to keep a promise made, and, in the next place, there is the wrong of demanding the impossible, and therefore forcing or permitting weak or unscrupulous men to make a promise which they either know, or…

The one fact which all of us need to keep steadfastly before our eyes is the need that performance should square with promise if good work is to be done, whether in the industrial or in the political world.

There are spheres in which the State can properly act, and spheres in which a free field must be given to individual initiative.

No man can be certain that he has found the entire solution of this infinitely great and intricate problem, and yet each man of us, if he would do his duty, must strive manfully so far as in him lies to help bring about that solution.

Any man at times will stumble, and it is then our duty to lift him up and set him on his feet again; but no man can be permanently carried, for if he expects to be carried he shows that he is not worth carrying.

Yet, though each man can and ought thus to be helped at times, he is lost beyond redemption if he becomes so dependent upon outside help that he feels that his own exertions are secondary.

There is not a man of us who does not sometimes slip, who does not sometimes need a helping hand; and woe to him who, when the chance comes, fails to stretch out that helping hand.

We must all learn the two lessons—the lesson of self-help and the lesson of giving help to and receiving help from our brother.

You men here in the West have built up this country not by seeking to avoid work, but by doing it well; not by flinching from every difficulty, but by triumphing over each as it arose and making out of it a stepping-stone to further…

No worse wrong can be done by a man to his children than to teach them to go through life endeavoring to shirk difficulties instead of meeting them and overcoming them.

It is eminently wise and proper to strive for such leisure in our lives as will give a chance for self-improvement; but woe to the man who seeks, or trains up his children to seek, idleness instead of the chance to do good work.

We must do our duty by ourselves and we must do our duty by our neighbors.

If he does not work, he fails not only in his duty to the rest of the community, but he fails signally in his duty to himself.

In short, he must work, and work not only for himself, but for others.

There are many ways in which this service can be rendered,—in art, in literature, in philanthropy, as a statesman, as a solider,—but in some way he is in honor bound to render it, so that benefit may accrue to his brethren who have been…