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We Miss You, Theodore Roosevelt
Epiphergy remembers a great American: President, Medal of Honor recipient, Conservationist, Sportsman, Leader, Visionary, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient.
TR said to "do what you can, with what you have, where you are". That's what we think also.
TR on Conservation:
"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase it's usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed."
"In a civilized and cultured country wild animals only continue to exist at all when preserved by sportsmen. The excellent people who protest against all hunting, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wildlife, are ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sportsman is by all odds the most important factor in keeping the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total extermination."
"We need, in the interest of the community at large, a rigid system of game-laws rigidly enforced, and it is not only admissible, but one may almost say necessary, to establish, under the control of the State, great national forests reserves which shall also be breeding-grounds and nurseries for wild game; but I should much regret to see grow up in this country a system of large private game-preserves kept for the enjoyment of the very rich. One of the chief attractions of the life of the wilderness is its rugged and stalwart democracy; there every man stands for what he actually is and can show himself to be."
TR on America:
"Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big."
"The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight."
"A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards."
"Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country."
"A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues."
"A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user."
"The American people abhor a vacuum."
"The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife."
"The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer."
"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 can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100% Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else."
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public."
TR on Character:
"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."
"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!"
"Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."
"The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name."
"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience."
"No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause."
"The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats."
"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
"With self-discipline most anything is possible."
TR on Work:
"Believe you can and you're halfway there."
"It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort."
"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
"It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things."
"Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing."
"The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants them to do, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it."
"People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives."
"When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it."
TR on Initiative:
"If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month."
"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 that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things."
"Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."
"The only man who makes no mistakes is the man who never does anything."
"The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead."
"Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace."
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