Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.
Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.
There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.
When you play, play hard when you work, don't play at all.
Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.
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.
Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.
A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
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.
I am only an average man but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man.
Believe you can and you're halfway there.
A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
With self-discipline most anything is possible.
The reactionary is always willing to take a progressive attitude on any issue that is dead.
The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.
A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.
Every immigrant who comes here should be required within five years to learn English or leave the country.
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.
Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
The government is us we are the government, you and I.
People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.
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.
Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.