Theodore Roosevelt Quotes & Sayings

“I don't always get shot during the middle of a speech — but when I do, I finish the damn speech.”

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

“Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”

“No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.”

“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.”

“The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.”

“There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.”

“In life, as in football, the principle to follow is to hit the line hard.”

“Nothing worth having comes easy.”

“I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.”

“Don't hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.”

“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.”