The Bull Moose.
On the rocks to the north of the Custer State Park in South Dakota, the American sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum chose the site of his magnum opus, completed in the last year of his life, in 1941, to become known as the Mount Rushmore National Monument. The four familiar faces, carved in granite by the sculptor himself, and finished after his death by his son Lincoln Borglum, are those of America’s greatest Presidents up until then: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
All my special deference to the Founding Presidents notwithstanding, I have no quarrel whatsoever with the choice of these four to represent America’s greatness from the outlook of the first century-and-a-half of her history. As a matter of fact, the only two among the later Presidents, worthy of being placed alongside these giants are FDR (in his own right), and JFK, who, despite the shortness of his office, represents the true Schubertian symbol of what the American future had hoped to be. (See my entry titled Assassination Of An American Dream, and for the explanation of my Schubertian allusion see another entry: But Yet Far Fairer Hopes.)
But the focus of this entry is not all of the above, but just one of them,--- the Bull Moose, and, yes, also the greatest of all Teddy Bears.
Compared in public affection to Andrew Jackson and in colorfulness to Abraham Lincoln, he had to overcome great odds in his ascent to historical greatness; he was an asthmatic child with very poor eyesight (his bad need of glasses was discovered only at the age of thirteen, although his wealthy parents should have known better and should have given him better attention and care on that account). He was a self-made man, despite the handicap of being born rich (in our day and age, when money and power go hand-in-hand, it sounds a bit ridiculous to call any wealthy person a self-made man) not only by virtue of his uncompromising hard work at Harvard and his subsequent political career, where he would meet some strong resistance to his rise from all corners, but, quite literally, through his daily rigorous work on reconstituting his physical body, from a frail weakling to the athletic and vigorous "bull moose."
The thrilling details of his eccentric life are all too well documented, and there would be no need to rehash them here, necessarily in a hurry. But, both as a personality and in terms of his career and life achievement, Teddy Roosevelt rests in eternity as a marvelous adornment to the benign and admirable image projected to the world by the United States at her best. Often strongly criticized by contemporaries, and, in retrospect, for the large difference between his moralistic rhetoric and political expedience in practicality, he is also seen as an impulsive bully in his treatment of smaller nations, while an overly cautious “half-loafer” (to use his own expression) in his approach to America’s (and his own) peers. But all this, even if most likely true, fades in contrast to the sheer virility and enormity of spirit, embodied by America’s twenty-sixth President, explorer, author, soldier, and an authentic original, whose legend unfettered by minutia lives on as a reminder of what is best about the nation he represents.
Today, unraveling the dirty mess of American foreign policy, one is strongly reminded of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous words capsulating the key principle of great-power conduct in world affairs: “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” Ironically, it is commonly believed that TR himself did not practice what he preached. This is, in fact, the typical misconception, when a big stick is being mistaken for loud words. What a difference this normal Rooseveltian situation makes with today’s practice of loud words (We won’t allow this!, we won’t allow that!, etc.), as contrasted to the actual impotence of Washington, insofar as the deeds are concerned.
I shall further explain what I mean in my next entry World Domination As A Good Thing.
World Domination As A Good Thing.
Continuing with my apologia of Teddy Roosevelt the bully, I move that there is nothing wrong with being a smart bully who bullies for a good cause and is successful in what he does. Paraphrasing Maxwell Smart, one who bullies for niceness, and is not perceived as bullying for evil.
No one in his right mind would condemn a lion for hunting and killing his prey. It is kind of sanctimonious to criticize predators for following their natural instincts. It is only when our lion starts having big problems catching small rabbits that he becomes an object of ridicule and condemnation… for bringing shame to his family name for such unnatural incompetence.
Which brings me to a disagreement on one particular point with Noam Chomsky, whom I otherwise admire as a fine specimen of the rare breed of geniuses.
In his criticism of American foreign policy, Noam Chomsky makes the compelling case that throughout the Cold War Washington’s main objective was not the containment of the Soviet Union, but the projection of the American power around the world, with all that this implied. Thus, to an even greater extent than it was fighting the threat of global Communism posed by Russia, America was determined to suppress any kind of regional, or even local nationalist threat to its worldwide interests, or what Chomsky calls “the threat of a good example.”
One of the key things superpowers do, he argues, is trying to organize the world according to the interests of their establishment, using military and economic means. The overall framework of US foreign policy can be explained by the domestic dominance of US business interests and a drive to secure the state-capitalist (see my important clarification of different uses of this term in the Contradiction section) system more generally. These interests set the political agenda and economic goals, aiming primarily at US economic dominance.
Although the general framework of foreign policy planning can be explained on economic grounds, it does not explain every intervention. He concludes that a significant part of American foreign policy is based on stemming the “threat of a good example.” This so-called threat refers to the possibility that a country could successfully develop outside the American managed global system, thus offering a model for other nations, including countries, in which the United States has strong economic interests. This, he says, has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene, to quell “independent development, regardless of ideology” in all regions of the world where she has little economic or safety interests. In one of his most well-known works, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky argues that this particular explanation accounts for the American interventions in Guatemala, Laos, Nicaragua, and Grenada (the list should go on, and on, and on, of course, as history keeps updating it), countries, which pose little or no military threat to the United States, and have few economic resources that could be exploited by American business interests.
How did this apply to the war in Vietnam?
According to Chomsky, the principal aim of the US policy was the destruction of the nationalist movements in the Vietnamese peasantry. In particular, he argued that US attacks were not in defense of South Vietnam against the North, but began directly in the early 1960’s, and were mostly aimed then at South Vietnam. He agreed with the view of orthodox historians that the US government was concerned about the possibility of a “domino effect” in South-East Asia, but not all that much concerned with the spread of communism and Soviet expansionism, but rather with such nationalist movements that would not be pliant to US interests.
Now, here comes my main argument of this important entry, which is as follows: I am willing to agree with Chomsky’s analysis of Washington’s intentions, which makes very good sense to me, but I disagree with his extremely negative assessment of them, as if they were some kind of monstrous anomaly, rather than a fairly sensible and consistent real-political behavior of a global superpower.
World domination is a good thing for somebody who can afford it, and who can conduct its implementation sensibly and ethically, which may be too much to be desired in real life, but at least not all that objectionable as a general principle. (I pray that my quasi-Voltairian touch of irony is not completely lost on the reader.) I am certain that the United States’ general conception of foreign policy throughout the cold war, despite the numerous cases of misjudgment and sheer stupidity, was a valid expression of her superpower status... End of that story.
In the light of the current collapse of American foreign policy, and of the American overall standing in the world, it becomes clear, at least to me, that it is much better for a superpower to pursue policies that can be disliked as much as the others want, as long as they are recognized as a legitimate manifestation of the said superpower’s national interest. The trouble with the current state of affaires is that Washington’s stubborn preoccupation with the neoconservative ideology has shifted this nation’s focus from the global American interest to a narrow regional obsession of a bunch of ideologues at the expense of virtually everything else, including the potentially irreparable damage done to this nation’s own backyard in Latin America through years of unconscionable neglect and of taking for granted what has always been far from obvious.
“Tis better to be vile than vile-esteemed,” opens a Shakespearean sonnet. To which I might add that perhaps the most sickening and ridiculous type of villain is the impotent villain, compensating for his impotence by loud barrages of flatulent demagoguery... Alas, poor Yorick! We all know him, Horatio…
Arrogance And Humility.
Whatever I said before about world domination being a good thing was unmistakably ironic, but it was also true. There is nothing unnatural in a superpower’s Wille zur Macht. And what is “natural” cannot be all that wrong! It is only when Power behaves stupidly that the unnaturalness of the combination of healthy might and obnoxious stupidity comes through and distorts the normal picture.
Teddy Roosevelt was never shy to project power. In many instances he acted as an unapologetic aggressor, and nobody should bear a grudge against him, because he never acted stupidly. This and the short next entry are designed to clarify the point of my last entry that world domination is a natural desire of a superpower, and when this desire is perceived as wrong by the world, something must be wrong and unnatural in that superpower’s projection of its otherwise legitimate will.
TR’s “Speak softly, but carry a big stick” is not about pulling punches, but about appearing humble, while “hitting hard.”
America must always exercise humility, which is the sugar coating on the bitter pill of a nation’s strength, if she wants the world to swallow that pill. Arrogant posturing is the self-defense of the weak, and it is unbecoming a great nation.
I may be contradicted by someone pointing out to me that Teddy Roosevelt was an arrogant man, in which case we may be disagreeing on the nature of his arrogance. Unlike today’s leaders of America, he was never humiliated, and he never acted stupidly. My next entry further clarifies what I mean.
Humiliation Of The Strong.
As I said before, Teddy Roosevelt had the right to be arrogant as long as he exercised his arrogance smartly. In all his foreign policy endeavors, he never found himself humiliated, either by his strong opponents or his weak quarry. This is something that cannot be said of his recent heirs in the White House. “Speak softly, but carry a big stick” may be mostly a figure of speech, but it is a priceless bequeathal to Washington’s officials in charge of American foreign policy, which so far they have failed to benefit from. One of the most hurtful downsides of this failure to be “humble” is currently pointed up by the world’s reaction to the ear-piercingly shrill talk pouring out of America’s foreign policy loudspeakers. Apparently, the sorry memory of the eight years of the George W. Bush Presidency has been a lesson wasted, if not on Mr. Obama personally, who is, indeed, a soft-spoken man by nature, then on the majority of the United States Congress, and on the foreign policy team of President Obama’s Administration. (Secretary Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Susan Rice are two very conspicuous examples.)
We want this and this!!! We won’t allow this and this!!! Washington shrieks in the voice strongly reminding that of the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice… but, as before, with her, nobody seems to listen, or shake in their boots.
It is so terribly humiliating, when a great superpower tells others, “I want this!” …and does not get it.
Teddy Dixit.
Teddy Roosevelt is an exceedingly appealing person to me. I think that today his sheer energy and positive concept of “strenuous life” might have saved America from her current downslide, but alas, today’s America, preoccupied with trivial pursuits, taking her eyes off the stars and her feet off terra firma, wouldn’t even have wanted him, just like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor did not want Jesus Christ in his theocracy.
I am closing this Rooseveltian cluster now with a personal selection of TR’s aphorisms, unsorted by subject and without any superfluous comment. I trust the reader will enjoy them the more, the longer he or she dwells on each and every one of these gems. Observe how relevant they all are to our time, a whole century later.---
A man who’s never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
A man good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance to the people and acknowledging no responsibility.
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Do not hit at all, if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
I am a part of everything that I have read.
I am only an average man, but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.
I care not what others think of what I do, but I care a lot about what I think of what I do! That is character!
I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.
I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head.
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman. If Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
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.
It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.
It is essential that there should be an organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes, and therefore labor must organize.
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
There is a homely adage which runs, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on the same level as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.
There can be no 50-50 Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.
On the rocks to the north of the Custer State Park in South Dakota, the American sculptor John Gutzon de la Mothe Borglum chose the site of his magnum opus, completed in the last year of his life, in 1941, to become known as the Mount Rushmore National Monument. The four familiar faces, carved in granite by the sculptor himself, and finished after his death by his son Lincoln Borglum, are those of America’s greatest Presidents up until then: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt.
All my special deference to the Founding Presidents notwithstanding, I have no quarrel whatsoever with the choice of these four to represent America’s greatness from the outlook of the first century-and-a-half of her history. As a matter of fact, the only two among the later Presidents, worthy of being placed alongside these giants are FDR (in his own right), and JFK, who, despite the shortness of his office, represents the true Schubertian symbol of what the American future had hoped to be. (See my entry titled Assassination Of An American Dream, and for the explanation of my Schubertian allusion see another entry: But Yet Far Fairer Hopes.)
But the focus of this entry is not all of the above, but just one of them,--- the Bull Moose, and, yes, also the greatest of all Teddy Bears.
Compared in public affection to Andrew Jackson and in colorfulness to Abraham Lincoln, he had to overcome great odds in his ascent to historical greatness; he was an asthmatic child with very poor eyesight (his bad need of glasses was discovered only at the age of thirteen, although his wealthy parents should have known better and should have given him better attention and care on that account). He was a self-made man, despite the handicap of being born rich (in our day and age, when money and power go hand-in-hand, it sounds a bit ridiculous to call any wealthy person a self-made man) not only by virtue of his uncompromising hard work at Harvard and his subsequent political career, where he would meet some strong resistance to his rise from all corners, but, quite literally, through his daily rigorous work on reconstituting his physical body, from a frail weakling to the athletic and vigorous "bull moose."
The thrilling details of his eccentric life are all too well documented, and there would be no need to rehash them here, necessarily in a hurry. But, both as a personality and in terms of his career and life achievement, Teddy Roosevelt rests in eternity as a marvelous adornment to the benign and admirable image projected to the world by the United States at her best. Often strongly criticized by contemporaries, and, in retrospect, for the large difference between his moralistic rhetoric and political expedience in practicality, he is also seen as an impulsive bully in his treatment of smaller nations, while an overly cautious “half-loafer” (to use his own expression) in his approach to America’s (and his own) peers. But all this, even if most likely true, fades in contrast to the sheer virility and enormity of spirit, embodied by America’s twenty-sixth President, explorer, author, soldier, and an authentic original, whose legend unfettered by minutia lives on as a reminder of what is best about the nation he represents.
Today, unraveling the dirty mess of American foreign policy, one is strongly reminded of Teddy Roosevelt’s famous words capsulating the key principle of great-power conduct in world affairs: “Speak softly but carry a big stick.” Ironically, it is commonly believed that TR himself did not practice what he preached. This is, in fact, the typical misconception, when a big stick is being mistaken for loud words. What a difference this normal Rooseveltian situation makes with today’s practice of loud words (We won’t allow this!, we won’t allow that!, etc.), as contrasted to the actual impotence of Washington, insofar as the deeds are concerned.
I shall further explain what I mean in my next entry World Domination As A Good Thing.
World Domination As A Good Thing.
Continuing with my apologia of Teddy Roosevelt the bully, I move that there is nothing wrong with being a smart bully who bullies for a good cause and is successful in what he does. Paraphrasing Maxwell Smart, one who bullies for niceness, and is not perceived as bullying for evil.
No one in his right mind would condemn a lion for hunting and killing his prey. It is kind of sanctimonious to criticize predators for following their natural instincts. It is only when our lion starts having big problems catching small rabbits that he becomes an object of ridicule and condemnation… for bringing shame to his family name for such unnatural incompetence.
Which brings me to a disagreement on one particular point with Noam Chomsky, whom I otherwise admire as a fine specimen of the rare breed of geniuses.
In his criticism of American foreign policy, Noam Chomsky makes the compelling case that throughout the Cold War Washington’s main objective was not the containment of the Soviet Union, but the projection of the American power around the world, with all that this implied. Thus, to an even greater extent than it was fighting the threat of global Communism posed by Russia, America was determined to suppress any kind of regional, or even local nationalist threat to its worldwide interests, or what Chomsky calls “the threat of a good example.”
One of the key things superpowers do, he argues, is trying to organize the world according to the interests of their establishment, using military and economic means. The overall framework of US foreign policy can be explained by the domestic dominance of US business interests and a drive to secure the state-capitalist (see my important clarification of different uses of this term in the Contradiction section) system more generally. These interests set the political agenda and economic goals, aiming primarily at US economic dominance.
Although the general framework of foreign policy planning can be explained on economic grounds, it does not explain every intervention. He concludes that a significant part of American foreign policy is based on stemming the “threat of a good example.” This so-called threat refers to the possibility that a country could successfully develop outside the American managed global system, thus offering a model for other nations, including countries, in which the United States has strong economic interests. This, he says, has prompted the United States to repeatedly intervene, to quell “independent development, regardless of ideology” in all regions of the world where she has little economic or safety interests. In one of his most well-known works, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Chomsky argues that this particular explanation accounts for the American interventions in Guatemala, Laos, Nicaragua, and Grenada (the list should go on, and on, and on, of course, as history keeps updating it), countries, which pose little or no military threat to the United States, and have few economic resources that could be exploited by American business interests.
How did this apply to the war in Vietnam?
According to Chomsky, the principal aim of the US policy was the destruction of the nationalist movements in the Vietnamese peasantry. In particular, he argued that US attacks were not in defense of South Vietnam against the North, but began directly in the early 1960’s, and were mostly aimed then at South Vietnam. He agreed with the view of orthodox historians that the US government was concerned about the possibility of a “domino effect” in South-East Asia, but not all that much concerned with the spread of communism and Soviet expansionism, but rather with such nationalist movements that would not be pliant to US interests.
Now, here comes my main argument of this important entry, which is as follows: I am willing to agree with Chomsky’s analysis of Washington’s intentions, which makes very good sense to me, but I disagree with his extremely negative assessment of them, as if they were some kind of monstrous anomaly, rather than a fairly sensible and consistent real-political behavior of a global superpower.
World domination is a good thing for somebody who can afford it, and who can conduct its implementation sensibly and ethically, which may be too much to be desired in real life, but at least not all that objectionable as a general principle. (I pray that my quasi-Voltairian touch of irony is not completely lost on the reader.) I am certain that the United States’ general conception of foreign policy throughout the cold war, despite the numerous cases of misjudgment and sheer stupidity, was a valid expression of her superpower status... End of that story.
In the light of the current collapse of American foreign policy, and of the American overall standing in the world, it becomes clear, at least to me, that it is much better for a superpower to pursue policies that can be disliked as much as the others want, as long as they are recognized as a legitimate manifestation of the said superpower’s national interest. The trouble with the current state of affaires is that Washington’s stubborn preoccupation with the neoconservative ideology has shifted this nation’s focus from the global American interest to a narrow regional obsession of a bunch of ideologues at the expense of virtually everything else, including the potentially irreparable damage done to this nation’s own backyard in Latin America through years of unconscionable neglect and of taking for granted what has always been far from obvious.
“Tis better to be vile than vile-esteemed,” opens a Shakespearean sonnet. To which I might add that perhaps the most sickening and ridiculous type of villain is the impotent villain, compensating for his impotence by loud barrages of flatulent demagoguery... Alas, poor Yorick! We all know him, Horatio…
Arrogance And Humility.
Whatever I said before about world domination being a good thing was unmistakably ironic, but it was also true. There is nothing unnatural in a superpower’s Wille zur Macht. And what is “natural” cannot be all that wrong! It is only when Power behaves stupidly that the unnaturalness of the combination of healthy might and obnoxious stupidity comes through and distorts the normal picture.
Teddy Roosevelt was never shy to project power. In many instances he acted as an unapologetic aggressor, and nobody should bear a grudge against him, because he never acted stupidly. This and the short next entry are designed to clarify the point of my last entry that world domination is a natural desire of a superpower, and when this desire is perceived as wrong by the world, something must be wrong and unnatural in that superpower’s projection of its otherwise legitimate will.
TR’s “Speak softly, but carry a big stick” is not about pulling punches, but about appearing humble, while “hitting hard.”
America must always exercise humility, which is the sugar coating on the bitter pill of a nation’s strength, if she wants the world to swallow that pill. Arrogant posturing is the self-defense of the weak, and it is unbecoming a great nation.
I may be contradicted by someone pointing out to me that Teddy Roosevelt was an arrogant man, in which case we may be disagreeing on the nature of his arrogance. Unlike today’s leaders of America, he was never humiliated, and he never acted stupidly. My next entry further clarifies what I mean.
Humiliation Of The Strong.
As I said before, Teddy Roosevelt had the right to be arrogant as long as he exercised his arrogance smartly. In all his foreign policy endeavors, he never found himself humiliated, either by his strong opponents or his weak quarry. This is something that cannot be said of his recent heirs in the White House. “Speak softly, but carry a big stick” may be mostly a figure of speech, but it is a priceless bequeathal to Washington’s officials in charge of American foreign policy, which so far they have failed to benefit from. One of the most hurtful downsides of this failure to be “humble” is currently pointed up by the world’s reaction to the ear-piercingly shrill talk pouring out of America’s foreign policy loudspeakers. Apparently, the sorry memory of the eight years of the George W. Bush Presidency has been a lesson wasted, if not on Mr. Obama personally, who is, indeed, a soft-spoken man by nature, then on the majority of the United States Congress, and on the foreign policy team of President Obama’s Administration. (Secretary Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Susan Rice are two very conspicuous examples.)
We want this and this!!! We won’t allow this and this!!! Washington shrieks in the voice strongly reminding that of the former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice… but, as before, with her, nobody seems to listen, or shake in their boots.
It is so terribly humiliating, when a great superpower tells others, “I want this!” …and does not get it.
Teddy Dixit.
Teddy Roosevelt is an exceedingly appealing person to me. I think that today his sheer energy and positive concept of “strenuous life” might have saved America from her current downslide, but alas, today’s America, preoccupied with trivial pursuits, taking her eyes off the stars and her feet off terra firma, wouldn’t even have wanted him, just like Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor did not want Jesus Christ in his theocracy.
I am closing this Rooseveltian cluster now with a personal selection of TR’s aphorisms, unsorted by subject and without any superfluous comment. I trust the reader will enjoy them the more, the longer he or she dwells on each and every one of these gems. Observe how relevant they all are to our time, a whole century later.---
A man who’s never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
A man good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance to the people and acknowledging no responsibility.
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Do not hit at all, if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit soft.
Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
I am a part of everything that I have read.
I am only an average man, but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.
I care not what others think of what I do, but I care a lot about what I think of what I do! That is character!
I don’t pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.
I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart, and that is softness of head.
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman. If Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.
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.
It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.
It is essential that there should be an organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes, and therefore labor must organize.
Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.
There is a homely adage which runs, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”
The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on the same level as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.
There can be no 50-50 Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 per cent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.
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