"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far"

Delicious Teddy Roosevelt quotes.

• "I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds." (Oyster Bay, NY, July 7, 1915)
  
• "There is not in all America a more dangerous trait than the deification of mere smartness unaccompanied by any sense of moral responsibility." (Abilene, KS, May 2, 1903)
  
• "Alone of human beings the good and wise mother stands on a plane of equal honor with the bravest soldier; for she has gladly gone down to the brink of the chasm of darkness to bring back the children in whose hands rests the future of the years. " (The Great Adventure, 1918)
  
• "No man can lead a public career really worth leading, no man can act with rugged independence in serious crises, nor strike at great abuses, nor afford to make powerful and unscrupulous foes, if he is himself vulnerable in his private character." (An Autobiography, 1913)
  
• "I have never in my life envied a human being who led an easy life; I have envied a great many people who led difficult lives and led them well." (Des Moines, Iowa, November 4, 1910)
  
• "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 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 and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for 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 he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." ("Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910)