Theodore Roosevelt

I am a perfectly healthy man. I am ready for anything.

I have always acted on the theory that if you want to get a thing done, you must do it yourself.

I am a man of action, and I like to see things done.

I have a perfect horror of the man who is afraid to do anything.

I am not a reformer; I am a conservative.

I am not an angel, and I am not a devil. I am a man.

I have always been a great believer in the power of the individual.

I am not a man of words; I am a man of deeds.

I have always been a great believer in the doctrine that the best way to get a thing done is to do it yourself.

I don't think there is any use of my going into the matter of the lynching. I will not say anything about it one way or the other.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.

No nation deserves to exist if it permits itself to lose the virile qualities without which no nation can speak with power, or can command respect in the councils of the world.

The most important of all qualities in a public man is courage.

I do not believe that the average negro is the equal of the average white man.

The American people are right in demanding that the power of the federal government be used to protect the weak against the strong.

I have never been able to understand why the man who works with his hands should be regarded as less worthy of respect than the man who works with his head.

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 am an American, and I belong to the American party, and I intend to fight for the American people.

We should treat the Indian as an individual, and not as a member of a tribe.

I have been President of the United States. I have been a colonel of a regiment. I have been a police commissioner of New York. I have been a cattle ranchman. I have been a hunter of big game. I have been a historian. I have been a naturalist. I have been a reformer. I have been a father. I have been a husband. I have been a man.