Skip to content

Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.

— Theodore Roosevelt Address at the Prize Day Exercises at Groton School (1904)

Another quote →

More quotes by Theodore Roosevelt

It is true of the Nation, as of the individual, that the greatest doer must also be a great dreamer.

I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far."

All really civilized communities should have effective arbitration treaties among themselves.

Nobel lecture (1910)

We propose to make the process of constitutional amendment far easier, speedier, and simpler than at present.

The performance of duty, and not an indulgence in vapid ease and vapid pleasure, is all that makes life worth while.

Theodore Roosevelt — An Autobiography (1913)

All Theodore Roosevelt quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Theodore Roosevelt (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.