Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Theodore T. Munger

Knowledge and personality make doubt possible, but knowledge is also the cure of doubt; and when we get a full and adequate sense of personality we are lifted into a region where doubt is almost impossible, for no man can know himself as he is, and all the fullness of his nature, without also knowing God.

Duty | Pleasure |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

Duty | Important | Love | Man | Patriotism | Respect | Right | Rights | Friendship | Respect |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'

Better | Duty | Education | Good | Land | Little | Means | Nothing | Right | Waste |

Theodore Parker

Let your pleasures be taken as Daniel took his prayer, with his windows open-pleasures which need not cause a single blush on an ingenuous cheek.

Duty | Mankind | Rank | Will |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

As regards capital cases, the trouble is that emotional men and women always see only the individual whose fate is up at the moment, and neither his victim nor the many millions of unknown individuals who would in the long run be harmed by what they ask. Moreover, almost any criminal, however brutal, has usually some person, often a person whom he has greatly wronged, who will plead for him. If the mother is alive she will always come, and she cannot help feeling that the case in which she is so concerned is peculiar, that in this case a pardon should be granted. It was really heartrending to have to see the kinfolk and friends of murderers who were condemned to death, and among the very rare occasions when anything governmental or official caused me to lose sleep were times when I had to listen to some poor mother making a plea for a criminal so wicked, so utterly brutal and depraved, that it would have been a crime on my part to remit his punishment.

Achievement | Business | Duty | Energy | Fortune | Good | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Power | Success | Wife | Woman | Business |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Facing the immense complexity of modern social and industrial conditions, there is need to use freely and unhesitatingly the collective power of all of us; and yet no exercise of collective power will ever avail if the average individual does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative, and responsibility. There is need to develop all the virtues that have the state for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based on the love of the one man for the one woman and on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the children that are theirs. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living; there must be shame at the thought of shirking the hard work of the world, and at the same time delight in the many-sided beauty of life.

Children | Duty | Future | Nations | Present | Rule | Wife | World |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Absolute | Business | Danger | Difficulty | Duty | Man | Obedience | Will | Wishes | Danger | Business | Think |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.

Control | Duty | Need | Right |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Much can be done by law towards putting women on a footing of complete and entire equal rights with man - including the right to vote, the right to hold and use property, and the right to enter any profession she desires on the same terms as the man... Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.

Better | Conservation | Duty | Existence | Exploit | Government | Health | Important | Land | People | Race | Training | Will | Work | Worth | Government |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The worst of all fears is the fear of living.

Children | Duty | Father | Life | Life | Man | Mother | Right | Selfishness | Will | Woman | Work | Worth |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Our whole experiment is meaningless unless we are to make this a democracy in the fullest sense of the word, in the broadest as well as the highest and deepest signi?cance of the word. It must be made a democracy economically, as well as politically. This does not mean that there shall not, be leadership in the economic as in the political world, or that there shall not be ample reward for high distinction and great service.

Duty | Loyalty | Loyalty | Public | Truth |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.

Achievement | Business | Duty | Fighting | Kill | Life | Life | Pleasure | Sorrow | Success | Worth | Business | Happiness |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.

Cleanliness | Duty | Glory | Practice | Prosperity | Public | Sincerity | Time | Old |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

It is not merely that we want to see the game played fairly. We also want to see the rules changed, so that there shall be both less opportunity and less temptation to cheat, and less chance for some few people to gain a pro?t to which either they are not entitled at all, or else which is so enormous as to be greatly in excess of what they deserve, even though their services have been great. We wish to do away with the pro?t that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and craft. We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a measurable equality of reward for services of similar value. To do all this, two, mutually supplementary movements are necessary. On the one hand, there must be - I think there now is - a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent.

Courage | Creed | Determination | Duty | Enough | Indispensable | Individual | Initiative | Man | Men | Morality | Occupation | Power | Present | Qualities | Receive | Truth | Worth |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

In our complex industrial civilization of today the peace of righteousness and justice, the only kind of peace worth having, is at least as necessary in the industrial world as it is among nations. There is at least as much need to curb the cruel greed and arrogance of part of the world of capital, to curb the cruel greed and violence of part of the world of labor, as to check a cruel and unhealthy militarism in international relationships.

Desire | Duty | Gratitude | History | Individual | Man | Means | Men | Nations | Peace | Power | Right | Surrender | Thought | Time | Title | World | Thought |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Optimism is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so.

Death | Duty | Fear | Joy | Life | Life |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Arrogance | Baseness | Duty | Good | Justice | Man | Wealth |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

We must set the end in view as the goal; and then, instead of making a fetish of some particular kind of means, we should adopt whatever honorable means will best accomplish the end. In so far as unrestricted individual liberty brings the best results, we should encourage it. But when a point is reached where this complete lack of restriction on individual liberty fails to achieve the best results, then, on behalf of the whole people, we should exercise the collective power of the people, through the State Legislatures in matters of purely local concern, and through the National Legislature when the purpose is so big that only National action can achieve it.

Administration | Control | Destiny | Duty | Freedom | Good | Honesty | Individual | Initiative | Order | Right | Sense | Struggle | World |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

Duty | Enough | Events | Government | Peace | People | Position | Sense | Work | Government |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

Action | Belief | Duty | Merit | People | Power | Public | Right |