Edmund Morris Quotes
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History admires the wise, but elevates the brave.
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It is idle to hope for the enforcement of a law where nineteen-twentieths of the people do not believe in the justice of its provisions.
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The reason that he knew so much about everything, I found, was that wherever he went he got right in with the people.
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All things come to him who hustles while he waits.
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In 1902, the Senator had been banned from the White House for punching out a colleague, mid-debate.
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A poet can do much more for his country than the proprietor of a nail factory.
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… 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.
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Roosevelt was at his most impassioned when commented on the sadistic quality of lynchings: There are certain hideous sights which when once seen can never be wholly erased from the mental retina. The mere fact of having seen them implies degradation...Whoever in any part of our country has ever taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by the dreadful torture of fire must forever after have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.
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Implicit in the stare of those eyes, the power of those knobbly hands, was labor's historic threat of violence against capital.
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A stocky figure in a frock coat sprang up the front steps of the White House.
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Better a thousand times err on the side of over-readiness to fight, than to err on the side of tame submission to injury, or cold-blooded indifference to the misery of the oppressed.
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As he waved at grizzled old Southerners, and they in turn waved the Stars and Stripes back at him, Roosevelt reflected that only thirty-three years before these men had been enemies of the Union. It took war to heal the scars of war; attack upon a foreign power to bring unity at home. But what future war would heal the scars of this one?
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There goes the most remarkable man I ever met. Unless I am badly mistaken, the world is due to hear from him one of these days.
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There are floods of praise coming in as well as criticism.
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Roosevelt gazed around the library. A glint in his spectacles betrayed displeasure. Loeb came up inquiringly, and there was a whispered conversation in which the words newspapermen and sufficient room were audible. Hurrying outside, Loeb returned with two dozen delighted scribes. They proceeded to report the subsequent ceremony with a wealth of detail unmatched in the history of presidential inaugurations.
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Persuasion should come before force. In any case it is the availability of raw power, not the use of it, that makes for effective diplomacy.
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The most dangerous members of the criminal class—the criminals of great wealth.
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I wonder whether he is the real thing, or only the bundle of eccentricities he appears.
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Do not all these things interest you? Isn’t it a fine thing to be alive when so many great things are happening?
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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.
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Three cheers for Mr. and Mrs. Bower and their really satisfactory American family of twelve children!
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I’m aware of the- the fact that people elsewhere in the world think differently from us. I can sort of see us, us Americans with their eyes. And not all that I see is- is attractive. I see an insular people who are- are insensitive to foreign sensibilities, who are lazy, obese, complacent and increasingly perplexed as to why we are losing our place in the world to people who are more dynamic than us and more disciplined.
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Most of the members are positively corrupt, and the others are really singularly incompetent.
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Take care of your morals first, your health next, and finally your studies.