Roosevelt Quotes
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As every faith teaches us -- and as presidents from Lincoln to Roosevelt to Reagan to Clinton have reminded us -- we must as Americans, try to see our nation not just through our own eyes, but through the eyes of others.
Joe Lieberman
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There is no secret here when he stood in the Roosevelt Room and said 'I never had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky,' ... He knew when he said that ... that he was misleading the people who were listening to him.
Charles Ruff
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Except for the two years he had lived with cowboys in North Dakota,and being the employer of a dozen or so servants,Roosevelt had never had to suffer any prolonged intimacy with the working class.From infancy,he had enjoyed the perquisites of money and social position.The money,through his own mismanagement,had often run short,and he was by no means wealthy even now, but he had always taken exclusivity for granted.
Edmund Morris
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Roosevelt remarked on the anomaly whereby man, as he progressed from savagery to civilization, used up more and more of the world’s resources, yet in doing so tended to move to the city, and lost his sense of dependence on nature.
Edmund Morris
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ON FRIDAY, 25 August, Roosevelt shocked most of his countrymen by dropping to the floor of Long Island Sound in one of the Navy’s six new submarines, appropriately named the Plunger. He remained beneath the surface (lashed with heavy rain) long enough to watch fish swim past his window. Then, taking the controls, he essayed a few movements himself, including one which brought the ship to the surface rear end up.
Edmund Morris
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I am not attempting here a full appreciation of Colonel Roosevelt. He will be known for all time as one of the great men of America. I am only giving you this personal recollection as a little contribution to his memory, as one that I can make from personal knowledge and which is now known only to myself. His conversation about birds was made interesting by quotations from poets. He talked also about politics, and in the whole of his conversation about them there was nothing but the motive of public spirit and patriotism. I saw enough of him to know that to be with him was to be stimulated in the best sense of the word for the work of life. Perhaps it is not yet realised how great he was in the matter of knowledge as well as in action. Everybody knows that he was a great man of action in the fullest sense of the word. The Press has always proclaimed that. It is less often that a tribute is paid to him as a man of knowledge as well as a man of action. Two of your greatest experts in natural history told me the other day that Colonel Roosevelt could, in that department of knowledge, hold his own with experts. His knowledge of literature was also very great, and it was knowledge of the best. It is seldom that you find so great a man of action who was also a man of such wide and accurate knowledge. I happened to be impressed by his knowledge of natural history and literature and to have had first-hand evidence of both, but I gather from others that there were other fields of knowledge in which he was also remarkable.
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
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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?
Edmund Morris
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Roosevelt remarked on the anomaly whereby man, as he progressed from savagery to civilization, used up more and more of the world’s resources, yet in doing so tended to move to the city, and lost his sense of dependence on nature. Lacking that, he also lost his foresight, and unwittingly depleted the inheritances of his children. “We cannot, when the nation becomes fully civilized and very rich, continue to be civilized and rich unless the nation shows more foresight than we are showing at this moment.
Edmund Morris
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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.
Edmund Morris
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Physically, too, he is funny—never more so than when indulging his passion for eccentric exercise. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge has been heard yelling irritably at a portly object swaying in the sky, “Theodore! if you knew how ridiculous you look on top of that tree, you would come down at once.”53 On winter evenings in Rock Creek Park, strollers may observe the President of the United States wading pale and naked into the ice-clogged stream, followed by shivering members of his Cabinet. Thumping noises in the White House library indicate that Roosevelt is being thrown around the room by a Japanese wrestler; a particularly seismic crash, which makes the entire mansion tremble, signifies that Secretary Taft has been forced to join in the fun.
Edmund Morris
