Roosevelt Teddy Quotes

Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don't have the strength.

A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

Complaining about a problem without posing a solution is called whining.

The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed.

Look Toward the stars but keep your feet firmly on the ground.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the one one who never does anything.

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... 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.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the one one who never does anything

Speak softly and carry a big stick.

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others... He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds - or on persons devoted to them - have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life. When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a 'dirty little atheist' he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished. If Paine had ceased his writings with 'The Rights of Man' he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But 'The Age of Reason' cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen - a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine. I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty. Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad. The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty - who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause - can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

The most effective way to transform your life, therefore, is not by quitting your job and moving to an ashram, but, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, by doing what you can, with what you have, where you are.

In the far corner, a tenor began to sing, Zsadist's crystal-clear voice sailing up toward the warrior paintings on the ceiling far, far above them all. At first John didn't know what the song was...although if he'd been asked what his name was, he would have said Santa Claus, or Luther Vandross, or Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe even Joan Collins.

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt’s, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero’s grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast.

The chairman of the state board of medical examiners was a retired physician who thought that President Teddy Roosevelt was the only other man in the world besides himself who had not been made from a banana.

When those who are responsible for the leadership of State begin to move in villainous ways; when they begin to destroy the fabric of what it is that our nation is held together with; when they violate the Constitution of our nation and begin to do things that are false to our dreams and our hopes--it is incumbent upon every citizen by right, but also by responsibility, to challenge that administration, to raise their voice in vigorous dissent and to challenge the way in which the state is doing business. And those who fail to do that, should be charged with patriotic treason!

Though a degree from Yale was not required, Pinchot wanted his foresters to be able to write well, for the numerous reports that their enemies in Congress would be second-guessing.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “The best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Well," Mr. Cheeseman interjected. "Perhaps there's an easy solution to this. Maybe Captain Fabulous has an alter ego." "What's an alter ego?" asked Gerard. "It's a superhero's true but secret identity," said Chip. "You know, the way that Superman is really Clark Kent." "Superman is really Clark Kent?" "It's pretty obvious," said Penny. "To everyone but you and Lois Lane." "Okay," Gerard conceded. "Captain Fabulous's alter ego will be...Teddy Roosevelt.

There is not in the world a more ignoble character than the mere money-getting American, insensitive to every duty, regardless of every principle, bent only on amassing a fortune," Roosevelt said just before he became president.

Yet there was no doubt that Theodore Roosevelt was peculiarly qualified to be President of all the people. Few, if any Americans could match the breadth of his intellect and the strength of his character. A random survey of his achievements might show him mastering German, French, and the contrasted dialects of Harvard and Dakota Territory; assembling fossil skeletons with paleontological skill; fighting for an amateur boxing championship; transcribing birdsong into a private system of phonetics; chasing boat thieves with a star on his breast and Tolstoy in his pocket; founding a finance club, a stockmen's association, and a hunting-conservation society; reading some twenty thousand books and writing fifteen of his own; climbing the Matterhorn; promulgating a flying machine; and becoming a world authority on North American game mammals. If the sum of all these facets of experience added up to more than a geometric whole - implying excess construction somewhere, planes piling upon planes - then only he, presumably, could view the polygon entire.

When I was extremely young and shockingly stupid, I thought you weren't supposed to ever get angry at anybody you cared about (lest you suspect I'm exaggerating the "shockingly stupid" part, I also thought Mount Rushmore was a natural phenomenon). I honestly believed that people who were truly in love would never dream of having a good, old-fashioned, knock-down, drag-out fight. I guess when you're the type of girl who walks around thinking that the wind just sort of sculpted Teddy Roosevelt into the side of a mountain, the concept of a fairy-tale relationship makes total sense.

Better for a man to fail, he said, even "to fail greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

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 you can do is nothing.

comparison was the thief of joy, as Teddy Roosevelt had once

Teddy Roosevelt had handpicked Taft as his successor, and when Teddy Roosevelt tells you to do something, you goddamn do it or risk having him punch you in the butt so hard your poop stays inside you forever out of fear of possibly running into Roosevelt.

Harvard coach Bill Reid would later credit Teddy Roosevelt with saving football. But words in a rule book are one thing. Someone had to show the nation a new way to play the game. The Carlisle Indians did that.

Far-seeing patriots should turn scornfully from men who seek power on a platform which with exquisite nicety combines silly inability to understand the national needs and dishonest insintcerity in promising conflicting and impossible remedies.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

 ‘Paradise Lost’ was printed in an edition of no more than 1,500 copies and transformed the English language. Took a while. Wordsworth had new ideas about nature: Thoreau read Wordsworth, Muir read Thoreau, Teddy Roosevelt read Muir, and we got a lot of national parks. Took a century. What poetry gives us is an archive, the fullest existent archive of what human beings have thought and felt by the kind of artists who loved language in a way that allowed them to labor over how you make a music of words to render experience exactly and fully.

By the early 1920s, the America of Jefferson, Lincoln, Whitman, and the young William Jennings Bryan had ceased to exist. It had been replaced by the world of McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson.

As soon as (Teddy Roosevelt) received an assignment for a paper or project, he would set to work, never leaving anything to the last minute. Prepared so far ahead "freed his mind" from worry and facilitated fresh, lucid thought.

Our fight is a fundamental fight against both of the old corrupt party machines, for both are under the dominion of the plunder league of the professional politicians who are controlled and sustained by the great beneficiaries of privilege and reaction.

Teddy Roosevelt put it this way: “Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation—these are the normal endings of the stately and beautiful creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness;…life is hard and cruel for all the lower creatures, and for man also in what the sentimentalists call a ‘state of nature.’ ” The state humans lived in for all but the most recent fragment of time.

Father [Teddy] always wanted to be the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral, and the baby at every christening.

Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. "I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do," she would write seven decades later.

Teddy Roosevelt "had relished "every hour" of every day as president. Indeed, (he was) fearing the "dull thud" he would experience upon returning to private life.

What a great man. There aren't very many of them left. I can't wait to see his other policies. Hope he's the next Teddy Roosevelt!

In Pinchot, he saw someone "who could relish, not run from a rainstorm," as he wrote. Just like himself.

cowboys

Far ahead of his time, and to the criticism of isolationists in his own party, Roosevelt tried to get the major nations of the world to come together and take stock of the globe they shared.

[Theodore] Roosevelt had long ago discovered that the more provincial the supplicants, the less able were they to understand that their need was not unique: that he was not yearning to travel two thousand miles on bad trains to support the reelection campaign of a county sheriff, or to address the congregation of a new chapel in a landscape with no trees. His refusal, no matter how elaborately apologetic, was received more often in puzzlement than anger. Imaginatively challenged folks, for whom crossing a state line amounted to foreign travel, could not conceive that the gray-blue eyes inspecting them had, over the past year, similarly scrutinized Nandi warriors, Arab mullahs, Magyar landowners, French marshals, Prussian academics, or practically any monarch or minister of consequence in Europe -- not to mention the maquettes in Rodin’s studio, and whatever dark truths flickered in the gaze of dying lions. From COLONEL ROOSEVELT, p. 104.

this country since 1865 has an unenviable record for political violence. Four presidents, plus the attempts on Truman and both Roosevelts—as you know, Teddy was actually wounded, in his unsuccessful campaign in 1912—not to mention Huey Long. There isn’t a country west of the Balkans with any kind of the same record. The Prime Ministers of England go everywhere with a single bodyguard.

We have the right to demand that if we find men against whom there is not only suspicion, but almost a certainty that they have had collusion with men whose interests were in conflict with the interests of the public, they shall, at least, be required to bring positive facts with which to prove there has not been such collusion; and they ought themselves to have been the first to demand such an investigation." -Teddy Roosevelt

Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life. There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there's someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean, of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word 'hunt' I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means 'man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pickup truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding above all with plaid'.

To the majority of those on the job his presence had been magical. Years afterward, the wife of one of the steam-shovel engineers, Mrs. Rose van Hardevald, would recall, "We saw him...on the end of the train. Jan got small flags for the children, and told us about when the train would pass...Mr. Roosevelt flashed us one of his well-known toothy smiles and waved his hat at the children..." In an instant, she said, she understood her husband's faith in the man. "And I was more certain than ever that we ourselves would not leave until it [the canal] was finished." Two years before, they had been living in Wyoming on a lonely stop on the Union Pacific. When her husband heard of the work at Panama, he had immediately wanted to go, because, he told her, "With Teddy Roosevelt, anything is possible." At the time neither of them had known quite where Panama was located.

Reverend Harper: Have you ever tried to persuade him that he wasn't Teddy Roosevelt? Abby Brewster: Oh, no. Martha Brewster: Oh, he's so happy being Teddy Roosevelt. Abby Brewster: Oh... Do you remember, Martha, once, a long time ago, we thought if he'd be George Washington, it might be a change for him, and we suggested it. Martha Brewster: And do you know what happened? He just stayed under his bed for days and wouldn't be anybody.

Teddy Roosevelt, during the First World War, used to talk about hyphenated Americans. He was talking about German-Americans who had a divided allegiance, and he said, “If you’re an American and something else, you’re not an American.

that “pusillanimous Presbyterian parson” in the White House. “‘Too proud to fight’! What sort of talk is that? It requires pride in order to fight. A coward slinks away with his tail between his legs. Brian, we need Teddy Roosevelt back in there!

hot and dry early that year, and by the Fourth of July the grass was parched and brown and stubby. The young Teddy Roosevelt, traveling through the north part of Dakota Territory on the way to his ranches near Medora, told a newspaper reporter in mid-July that “Between the drouth, the

All the cartoonists at heart liked him, and there was seldom or never anything bitter or really unfriendly in their portrayals of him; they were uniformly good-natured.” Caricatures even transformed his failure during a mid-November bear hunt into a triumph, conjuring an image of the president steadfastly refusing to shoot a small bear furnished for the occasion. As renditions of the original Clifford Berryman cartoon proliferated, the bear dwindled in size until he appeared as a tiny cub, prompting toy store owners to market stuffed bears in honor of Teddy Roosevelt. Soon the Teddy bear became one of the most cherished toys of all time.

Teddy Roosevelt famously said, “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.

Roosevelt set his sights on a strikingly tall man striding into camp alongside one of the native’s harems. He had no female companions, yet he was also naked and carried a spear and bow in Nhambiquara fashion. As the man approached, Roosevelt’s mouth lay agape noticing that he bore a full beard and his skin pigmentation was unquestionably white, and yet he was weathered to a leathery brown. The

President Theodore Roosevelt (after whom the Teddy Bear is named) was particularly fond of animals, having five guinea pigs called Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, Admiral Dewey, and Father O’Grady. He also owned a small bear called Jonathan Edwards, a lizard by the name of Bill, Baron Spreckle (a hen), a badger called Josiah, Eli Yale the parrot and - brilliantly - a snake known to his family as Emily Spinach.

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... 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. Teddy Roosevelt

It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

For instance, with "Ragtime" I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That's the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Braodviw Avenue looked like then: trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was president. One thing led to another and that's the way that book began: through desperation to those few images.... - 92nd Street YMHA Interview

At the same time that he was devising a response to the Afghanistan incursion, Carter had to confront a much more acute crisis in Iran, where he had brought the greatest disaster of his presidency down upon himself. In November 1977, he welcomed the shah of Iran to the White House, and on New Year’s Eve in Tehran, raising his glass, he toasted the ruler. Though the shah was sustained in power by a vicious secret police force, Carter praised him as a champion of “the cause of human rights” who had earned “the admiration and love” of the Iranian people. Little more than a year later, his subjects, no longer willing to be governed by a monarch imposed on them by the CIA, drove the shah into exile. Critically ill, he sought medical treatment in the United States. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance warned that admitting him could have repercussions in Iran, and Carter hesitated. But under pressure from David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, and the head of the National Security Council, Zbigniew Brzezinski, he caved in. Shortly after the deposed shah entered the Mayo Clinic, three thousand Islamic militants stormed the US embassy compound in Tehran and seized more than fifty diplomats and soldiers. They paraded blindfolded US Marine guards, hands tied behind their backs, through the streets of Tehran while mobs chanted, “Death to Carter, Death to the Shah,” as they spat upon the American flag and burned effigies of the president—scenes recorded on camera that Americans found painful to witness.

Teddy Roosevelt?" I suggested. Sadie and I had been trying to figure out the second mathlete's costume for a few minutes. He was wearing a 1930's-style suit,had his hair slicked down carefully, and was sporting a fake mustache. "No glasses. And I can't even begin to imagine the connection between Davy Jone's Locker and Teddy Roosevelt." Sadie pulled a long gold hair from her pumpkin-orange punch and sighed. Maybe her mother hadn't topped her Sleepy Hollow triumph, but it wasn't from lack of determination. What Mrs. Winslow hadn't achieved in creativity (she'd gone the mermaid route), she'd made up in the details. The tailed skirt was intricately beaded and embroidered in a dozen shades of blue and green. It was pretty amazing.The problem was the bodice: not a bikini, but not much better as far as Sadie was concerned. It was green, plunging, and edged with itchy-looking scallops. She was managing to stay covered by the wig, but that was an issue in itself. It was massive,made up of hundreds of trailing corkscrew curls in a metallic blonde. To top it all off, the costume included a glittering, three point crown, and a six-foot trident, complete with jewels and trailing silk seaweed. "Sadie," I'd asked quietly when she'd appeared at my house, shivering and tangled in her wig, "why don't you..." Just tell her where she can shove her trident? But that would just have been mean. Sadie gives in and wears the costumes because it's infinitely easier than fighting. "...come next door and we'll see if Sienna has a shawl you can borrow?

As President Teddy Roosevelt put it: 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.

Wilson’s defining achievement as president was his legislative agenda, the “New Freedom.” He had written in 1908 that the president was “the political leader of the nation.” Wilson took it upon himself to be a new type of executive, a prime minister more than a president, to guide the legislative process so that “no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.”4 The New Freedom represented his plan for a new America, with the government, the Constitution, and the relationship between the central authority and the people all remade—to give the president new, sweeping powers. Teddy Roosevelt had started this process in 1901. Wilson put an exclamation point on the effort. And the presidents who followed him built on Wilson’s theoretical designs and program directives.

In the incongruous role of the insurgent party-builder, he made crystal clear the whole host of inferences we have drawn from the experiences of Monroe and Polk: that innovation, however orthodox, is inherently destabilizing; that the purely constructive leadership project is an illusion; that the affiliated leader cannot assume independent ground without ultimately embracing the role of the heretic; that the only way ever to be president in your own right is to become yourself a great repudiator and set yourself directly against the bulwark of received power; that political disruption parallels presidential significance. Roosevelt's insight was not simply that new achievements do not rest securely on old foundations, but that to save the handiwork of his presidency he would have to reconstruct its political base.

Eleanor was a member of one of America’s great families, niece to Teddy Roosevelt and a distant cousin of her future husband. But she was not raised to be anyone significant. In fact, it’s surprising she survived her upbringing at all—one cousin called it “the grimmest childhood I had ever known.” Her father was an alcoholic who kept abandoning the family. One of her two brothers died when she was five years old, and her mother, who she remembered as “kindly and indifferent,” died when she was eight. Her father, who Eleanor worshiped despite his endless betrayals, died two years later. The orphan was sent to live with her grandmother, a stern woman with two alcoholic adult sons whose advances caused a teenage Eleanor to put three locks on her door. When she met Franklin, he was a student at Harvard and was known in the family as the not particularly impressive only son of a domineering widow. Eleanor got pregnant right after her wedding and spent the next ten years having six children and wriggling under her mother-in-law’s thumb. (“I was your real mother; Eleanor merely bore you,” Sara Roosevelt told her grandchildren.)

Maybe we should give Andrew a little test, just to make sure the fever didn’t damage his brain.” “Don’t be silly.” Hannah tapped the rolled magazine on her knee as if she wanted to whack Edward even harder than she’d whacked Buster. Looking at me, Edward went on with his game. “We’ll start with easy questions. What year is it?” Hannah protested, but I answered anyway. “1910.” Edward pressed on. “Who’s the president?” “For heaven’s sake,” Hannah said, “stop tormenting him, Edward.” 1910--who was president in 1910? Dates, names, and faces tumbled through my head. Ulysses S. Grant? Woodrow Wilson? Chester Arthur? Arthur Chester? Teddy Roosevelt? I’d memorized the presidents for my fifth-grade teacher, but I couldn’t remember them now. “It’s William Howard Taft,” Theo shouted. “Everybody knows that.” “Andrew didn’t,” Edward said. “Of course he did.” Hannah patted my hand. “He’s tired, that’s all.” Refusing to give up, Edward folded his arms across his chest and grinned at me. “Let’s see if you can answer this one. How many states are there?” Without thinking, I said, “Fifty.” “Didn’t I tell you he was touched in the head?” Edward laughed. “Even George Foster knows there’s only forty-six states.

When the time comes, & I hope it comes soon, to bury this era of moral rot & the defiling of our communal, social, & democratic norms, the perfect epitaph for the gravestone of this age of unreason should be Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley's already infamous quote: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing... as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” Grassley's vision of America, quite frankly, is one I do not recognize. I thought the heart of this great nation was not limited to the ranks of the plutocrats who are whisked through life in chauffeured cars & private jets, whose often inherited riches are passed along to children, many of whom no sacrifice or service is asked. I do not begrudge wealth, but it must come with a humility that money never is completely free of luck. And more importantly, wealth can never be a measure of worth. I have seen the waitress working the overnight shift at a diner to give her children a better life, & yes maybe even take them to a movie once in awhile - and in her, I see America. I have seen the public school teachers spending extra time with students who need help & who get no extra pay for their efforts, & in them I see America. I have seen parents sitting around kitchen tables with stacks of pressing bills & wondering if they can afford a Christmas gift for their children, & in them I see America. I have seen the young diplomat in a distant foreign capital & the young soldier in a battlefield foxhole, & in them I see America. I have seen the brilliant graduates of the best law schools who forgo the riches of a corporate firm for the often thankless slog of a district attorney or public defender's office, & in them I see America. I have seen the librarian reshelving books, the firefighter, police officer, & paramedic in service in trying times, the social worker helping the elderly & infirm, the youth sports coaches, the PTA presidents, & in them I see America. I have seen the immigrants working a cash register at a gas station or trimming hedges in the frost of an early fall morning, or driving a cab through rush hour traffic to make better lives for their families, & in them I see America. I have seen the science students unlocking the mysteries of life late at night in university laboratories for little or no pay, & in them I see America. I have seen the families struggling with a cancer diagnosis, or dementia in a parent or spouse. Amid the struggles of mortality & dignity, in them I see America. These, & so many other Americans, have every bit as much claim to a government working for them as the lobbyists & moneyed classes. And yet, the power brokers in Washington today seem deaf to these voices. It is a national disgrace of historic proportions. And finally, what is so wrong about those who must worry about the cost of a drink with friends, or a date, or a little entertainment, to rephrase Senator Grassley's demeaning phrasings? Those who can't afford not to worry about food, shelter, healthcare, education for their children, & all the other costs of modern life, surely they too deserve to be able to spend some of their “darn pennies” on the simple joys of life. Never mind that almost every reputable economist has called this tax bill a sham of handouts for the rich at the expense of the vast majority of Americans & the future economic health of this nation. Never mind that it is filled with loopholes written by lobbyists. Never mind that the wealthiest already speak with the loudest voices in Washington, & always have. Grassley’s comments open a window to the soul of the current national Republican Party & it it is not pretty. This is not a view of America that I think President Ronald Reagan let alone President Dwight Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt would have recognized. This is unadulterated cynicism & a version of top-down class warfare run amok. ~Facebook 12/4/17

Then I remembered something I’d read that Teddy Roosevelt had said: “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…who strives…who spends himself…and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

When America liked it? When Cuba was racially segregated? When education was only available to a privileged few? When the poor died of easily curable ailments? When vice was rampant? Had they preferred Batista's mafia-infested Cuba? Or the Cuba between the state that Teddy Roosevelt preened to subjugate and Franklin Delano Roosevelt worked to keep?

If he (Teddy Roosevelt) lacked Will Taft's immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality.

More than a few historians have suggested that heavy drinking in colonial times (and well into the nineteenth century) occurred, at least in part, because water supplies were unreliable and could, in some cases, cause disease. Food supplies—often not properly refrigerated in an era when an icehouse was considered “high tech”—were similarly suspect.

What can an ex-President of the United States do except get drunk?” (There are other versions of the line that are quite similar.)

Teddy Roosevelt, another letter read, “Far better to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

It is not what we have that will make us a great nation; it is the way in which we use it.

James Buchanan’s collegiate record for “spirited” rambunctiousness arguably rivals that of George

James Buchanan’s collegiate record for “spirited” rambunctiousness arguably rivals that of George W. Bush while a student at Yale.

Ousted from the Lincoln ticket, Hamlin—temperate when it came to his own drinking—perhaps was only too happy to comply. And so Johnson—on one of the most important days of his political career—opted for the dubious “hair of the dog” strategy. But sometimes the dog bites back.

Beer, if drunk in moderation, softens the temper, cheers the spirit, and promotes health.” Jefferson

When some members of the Ford team (including the former president and Betty) left the White House for California the next day, it was said that everyone onboard a backup plane (Carter did not grant permission for them to use Air Force One) refused to eat the peanuts from an offering of mixed nuts—and then, in a fit of political pique (reinforced, perhaps by semi-serious hangovers or still slightly inebriated embers of the previous night’s ceremonial drowning of sorrows), purposely tossed the peanuts around the aircraft.

You can choose your friends, but not your relatives.

He hadn’t even come to the Teddy Roosevelt School with Sampson.

BELL WOOD CAME OVER, a big bluff man with a mustache and a gap between his two square front teeth; he wore round gold-rimmed glasses like Teddy Roosevelt. He had a cup of coffee in his hand and nudged the leg of Lucas’s chair. “Sorry about Pole. He can be an asshole.” “I picked up on that,” Lucas said, looking up. “You in decent shape with him?

Doctor!” Roosevelt implored. “Please…” “Father, it’s okay,” Kermit said reassuringly. “I’ve known of your malaria for some time. Did you not think I could recognize the symptoms of a disease for which I myself am infected?” “Kermit,

Well,” Dr. Cajazeira interrupted. “Your remaining eye deteriorates further with the jaundice. I’m afraid there is little I can do for you here in the wilderness. My best advice to you, senhor President, is to leave the hunting to more able-bodied members of the expedition before someone is injured or killed.” Roosevelt seethed. “No,” he said, shaking his head vigorously. “No one is going to take my rifle away, nobody! Did you hear me? I am not to be treated like a scolded child.” Dr.

Power,” Kermit said, “the opium of malcontents.” Roosevelt rubbed his chin. “This is all extremely disconcerting. All of these men have access to guns and ammunition.” “Let

What I found there disturbed me greatly. Warriors danced and whooped around blazing fires with their faces painted red and colored in black soot in the unmistakable manner of impending warfare.

They have many rites-of-passage when their men become of age, like drinking hoasca made from the sap of cipó vine that will force you to listen to the voices of dead ancestors for many days, or withstanding the beatings of the tribe’s females using a whip made of thin tree branches.

Colonel Roosevelt, few secrets are kept on an expedition through the jungle, especially when it comes to malaria. You are surrounded by men of the Amazon; they can smell its symptoms like bloodhounds. Your own son may be the only remaining victim of your poorly hidden deceit.” “I

Father, it’s okay,” Kermit said reassuringly. “I’ve known of your malaria for some time. Did you not think I could recognize the symptoms of a disease for which I myself am infected?” “Kermit,

Roosevelt rolled over and peered at his snoring twenty-four-year-old son, cloaked within the hut’s darkness. Beside Kermit’s cot and under a dying candle, Teddy could discern an open book, a parcel of paper and a pen, and a dog-eared photograph, presumably of Kermit’s fiancée, the lovely Belle.

The permeating heat, combined with Teddy’s lifetime struggle with asthma, often felt like a prizefighter’s right-handed roundhouse to his fifty-four-year-old gut. And to make matters worse—and verified by personal accounts offered by the experienced Brazilian officers—his misery would only worsen as they descended into the heart of the Amazon’s sweltering jungle. Theodore Roosevelt possessed a keen sense of own body’s steady decline with his advancing age, and he inwardly bemoaned the lessening of his usual copious vitality. If only I could recapture just a sliver of youth, he pondered. If only I could gather enough strength to reclaim some of my former vigor, before all is lost on this most inhospitable continent.  Yet

Theodore Roosevelt had made numerous decisions during his long and storied career—some were good, some bad, some indifferent, and some that turned out to be absolute disasters. He always firmly believed the nature of a good leader was not to be perfect—men were mortal and not Gods—but to be bold, hold true to your own principles, and to issue quick and decisive edicts. Roosevelt often marveled at the instincts

Witnesses to his whoppers realized that Reagan was not lying but had persuaded himself of the validity of his tales. “He finds it next to impossible to say anything that is not in some crucial way untrue,” wrote the journalist Jack Beatty. “It’s not a credibility gap, for there is no evidence of cynical or even conscious duplicity. The President is so far out of touch that it amounts to a reality gap.” Still, listeners were often dumbfounded. His daughter Patti said, “He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless.” John Sloan, author of The Reagan Effect, has written: “In Reagan’s mind, unpleasant facts could be avoided; contradictions could be denied; anecdotes could overcome facts; movie illusions could substitute for history; unpleasant realities could be blamed on a hostile press.” His fictions mattered little, though, for after a generation of assassination and scoundrelry the media decided—consciously or unconsciously—to feature his presidency as a success story and to brush aside inconvenient particulars. “Ronald Reagan,” observed the political scientist James David Barber, “is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.” In London, a writer in the Observer commented: “His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point … he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year.

Theodore Roosevelt possessed a keen sense of own body’s steady decline with his advancing age, and he inwardly bemoaned the lessening of his usual copious vitality. If only I could recapture just a sliver of youth, he pondered. If only I could gather enough strength to reclaim some of my former vigor, before all is lost on this most inhospitable continent.  Yet

The final word belongs to one of Truman’s aides, George Elsey. “It’s all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing,” he commented subsequently. “The whole goddamn war was a horrible thing.

In other words, in Barack Obama’s world, incrementalism is good enough. Fortunately, nobody ever told that to FDR or Teddy Roosevelt, or Lyndon Johnson.

Teddy Roosevelt said that “far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat

Teddy Roosevelt quote, “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Among all the wild absurdities to which Mr. Thayer has committed himself, probably the wildest is his theory that flamingos are concealingly colored because their foes mistake them for sunsets . . . these suppositions represent nothing but pure guesswork, and even to call them guesswork is a little over-conservative, for they come nearer to the obscure mental processes which are responsible for dreams.

Their work ethic and strong arms and backs were sought to build a rapidly growing America, but Italian workers were often both underpaid and resented by other Americans looking for jobs. At the turn of the century, a public notice printed in New York City newspapers offered the following pay for laborers at the Croton Reservoir in Westchester County, New York: Common labor, White $1.30–$1.50 a day Common labor, Colored $1.25–$1.40 a day Common labor, Italian $1.15–$1.25 a day On March 14, 1891, an angry mob had stormed a jail in New Orleans, pulled out nine Italian men accused of murdering the chief of police, grabbed two more off the street, and hanged them all, the largest mass lynching in American history. Another five Italians were lynched in New Orleans eight years later. Between 1880 and 1920, at least 50 Italians were lynched, and during his Memorial Day speech in St. Louis in 1917, former President Teddy Roosevelt insisted that all immigrants must speak English and become “Americans,” not people with hyphenated identities like Italian-Americans.

Whether or not readers got Berryman’s pun, they rejoiced in his imagery, and demanded more “bear cartoons” after Roosevelt returned to Washington. Berryman obliged—again and again, as he realized he had hit upon a symbol the public adored. With repetition, his original lean bear became smaller, rounder, and cuter. He drew it as “a poor measly little cub with most of its fur rubbed off, and big ears like prickly pears,” and it became the leitmotif of every cartoon he drew of Theodore Roosevelt. That winter, by one of the mysterious coincidences that yoke inventions, stuffed, plush bear cubs with button eyes and movable joints began to issue from Margarete Stieff’s toy factory in Giengen, Germany. Three thousand were ordered by F.A.O. Schwarz of New York City, while in Brooklyn a storekeeper named Morris Michtom began producing something similar at $1.50 each. The competing bears soon fused, along with Berryman’s cub, into a single cuddly entity that attached to itself the nickname of the President of the United States. For decades, perhaps centuries to come, uncounted millions of children across the world would hug their Teddy Bears, even as the identities of Stieff, Michtom, Berryman, and Roosevelt himself rubbed away like lost plush.

Animals President Theodore Roosevelt (after whom the Teddy Bear is named) was particularly fond of animals, having five guinea pigs called Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans, Admiral Dewey, and Father O’Grady. He also owned a small bear called Jonathan Edwards, a lizard by the name of Bill, Baron Spreckle (a hen), a badger called Josiah, Eli Yale the parrot and - brilliantly - a snake known to his family as Emily Spinach. In its lifetime, an albatross is believed to fly around fifteen million miles. To put that into perspective, it is the same as flying half way to Mars when it is at its closest distance to the Earth. In possibly one of the cutest facts you will ever read, sea otters hold each other’s paws whilst they are asleep so they don’t drift apart from each other. Elephant shrews are more closely related to elephants than they are shrews. Some ribbon worms will eat themselves if they can’t find anything else to eat. Amazingly, they can consume up to 95% of their own bodyweight and still survive.