Deborah Chadd > Deborah's Quotes

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...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

“Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not Guilty'.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“In this country we have no place for hyphenated Americans.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of today.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Women should have free access to every field of labor which they care to enter, and when their work is as valuable as that of a man it should be paid as highly.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“No man is above the law, and no man is below it.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“The death-knell of the republic had rung as soon as the active power became lodged in the hands of those who sought, not to do justice to all citizens, rich and poor alike, but to stand for one special class and for its interests as opposed to the interests of others.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“People ask the difference between a leader and a boss ... The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“The government is us; WE are the government, you and I."- Theodore Roosevelt”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“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.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“It is no use to preach to children if you do not act decently yourself.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“We Americans have many grave problems to solve, many threatening evils to fight, and many deeds to do, if, as we hope and believe, we have the wisdom, the strength, and the courage and the virtue to do them. But we must face facts as they are. We must neither surrender ourselves to a foolish optimism, nor succumb to a timid and ignoble pessimism.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life

“Surely our people do not understand even yet the rich heritage that is theirs. There can be nothing in the world more beautiful than the Yosemite, the groves of giant sequoias and redwoods, the Canyon of the Colorado, the Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Three Tetons; and our people should see to it that they are preserved for their children and their children’s children forever, with their majesty all unmarred.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter

“In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“It is better for the Government to help a poor man to make a living for his family than to help a rich man make more profit for his company.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography

“To befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business & corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“Ridicule is one of the favorite weapons of wickedness, and it is sometimes incomprehensible how good and brave boys will be influenced for evil by the jeers of associates who have no one quality that calls for respect, but who affect to laugh at the very traits which ought to be peculiarly the cause for pride.”
― Theodore Roosevelt ridicule bullying

“Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography