Category: Quote of the Day

Do Something Now. If not you, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?

Theodore Roosevelt

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

Theodore Roosevelt

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

Theodore Roosevelt

The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness – it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream.

Theodore Roosevelt

There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag…We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language…and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.

Theodore Roosevelt

I ran this one a year and a half ago but it’s well worth running every year.

The Man in the Arena as it is called,  is part of a speech called Citizenship in a Republic made by Theodore Roosevelt in Paris, France on April 23, 1910.  It’s well known but well worth requoting.

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. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”

Theodore Roosevelt