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The men with the muck-rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck, and to look upward to the celestial crown above them.

— Theodore Roosevelt

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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)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.

William Shakespeare As You Like It (1599)

One country, one constitution, one destiny.

Daniel Webster

Since, in the long run, every planetary society will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.

Carl Sagan Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (1994)

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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.