It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.
Theodore RooseveltRead
Americanism is a question of principle, of idealism, of character. It is not a matter of birthplace, or creed, or line of descent.
Interpretation
Americanism is defined by principles and ideals rather than by where one is born or their background.
In this quote, Theodore Roosevelt emphasizes that Americanism is rooted in fundamental values such as principle, idealism, and character, rather than superficial attributes like birthplace or ancestry. It implies that what truly defines a person's identity and belonging to a nation are their beliefs and integrity, rather than their lineage or origin.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about citizenship and national identity.
It tires me to talk to rich men. You expect a man of millions, the head of a great industry, to be a man worthhearing; but as a rule they don't know anything outside their own business.
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
Conservation means development as much as it does protection._x000D_ _x000D_ A man's usefulness depends upon his living up to his ideals insofar as he can.
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 at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
The human person, whose definition serves as the touchstone according to which good must be distinguished from evil, is considered as sacred, in what one might call the ritual sense of the word. It has something of that transcendental majesty which the churches of all times have given to their Gods.
Any black person who clings to the misguided notion that white people represent the embodiment of all that is evil and black people all that is good remains wedded to the very logic of Western metaphysical dualism that is the heart of racist binary thinking. Such thinking is not liberatory. Like the racist educational ideology it mirrors and imitates, it invites a closing of the mind.
Here we go mother on the shipless ocean. Pity us, pity the ocean, here we go.
The overwhelming condemnation makes it clear we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball... is in teaching people what racism actually is ... which allows people to say incredibly racist things while insisting they would never.
[T]ruth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred
We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.