Theodore Roosevelt quotes, verified

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much.”

“The Strenuous Life,” Chicago, 10 April 1899

From Roosevelt's speech “The Strenuous Life,” given at the Hamilton Club in Chicago on 10 April 1899.

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“To do our duty, that is the summing up of the whole matter. We must do our duty by ourselves and we must do our duty by our neighbors.”

"The Labor Question," address at the Chicago Labor Day picnic; collected in The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses, 3 September 1900

From an address Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, gave to working men at a Labor Day picnic in Chicago on 3 September 1900.

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“The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight - that he shall not be a mere passenger.”

Remarks at the Banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, New York City, 11 November 1902

Spoken at the New York Chamber of Commerce banquet on 11 November 1902, a year into Roosevelt's presidency and weeks after he settled the anthracite coal strike by arbitration.

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“Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it. What you can do is to keep it for your children, your children's children, and for all who come after you.”

Remarks at the Grand Canyon, Arizona, 6 May 1903

Spoken on the south rim of the Grand Canyon, then in Arizona Territory, on 6 May 1903, during a two month western tour.

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“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,” Sorbonne, Paris, 23 April 1910

From Roosevelt's address “Citizenship in a Republic,” given at the Sorbonne in Paris on 23 April 1910 to an audience of about two thousand.

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“I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”

"The New Nationalism", speech at Osawatomie, Kansas; printed in The New Nationalism (New York: The Outlook Company, 1910), chapter 'The New Nationalism', p. 20

Delivered on 31 August 1910 at the dedication of John Brown Memorial Park in Osawatomie, Kansas, soon after Roosevelt returned from Africa and Europe.

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“For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.”

Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (1913), Chapter IX, Outdoors and Indoors

From Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography, published in 1913, in the chapter on family life at Sagamore Hill, his home at Oyster Bay on Long Island.

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“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.”

Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, 10 Jan 1917; read before the National Security League's Congress of Constructive Patriotism, 26 Jan 1917; printed in the Proceedings (1917), p. 172

From a letter to S. Stanwood Menken dated 10 January 1917, read aloud before the National Security League's Congress of Constructive Patriotism in Washington on 26 January 1917.

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