Theodore Roosevelt

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.

We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

No man is above the law, and no man is below it.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

I feel as fit as a bull moose.

The White House is a bully pulpit.

Then get busy and find out how to do it.

The great corporations which we have grown to speak of rather loosely as trusts are the creatures of the State, and the State not only has the right to control them, but it is duty bound to control them wherever the need of such control is shown.

If given the choice between Righteousness and Peace, I choose Righteousness.

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

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune.

To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

There must be no division by class hatred, whether this hatred be that of creed against creed, nationality against nationality, section against section, or men of one social or industrial condition against men of another social and industrial condition. We must ever judge each individual on his own conduct and merits, and not on his membership in any class, whether that class be based on theological, social, or industrial considerations.

Freemasonry teaches not merely temperance, fortitude, prudence, justice, brotherly love, relief, and truth, but liberty, equality, and fraternity, and it denounces ignorance, superstition, bigotry, lust tyranny and despotism.