Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

The best executive is one who has sense enough to pick good people to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure... than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.

Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.

I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.

For unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

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 first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

If there is not the war, you don't get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don't get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

When you play, play hard; when you work, don't play at all.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you've got to start young.

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.

We can have no '50-50' allegiance in this country. Either a man is an American and nothing else, or he is not an American at all.

The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

The American people abhor a vacuum.

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

Absence and death are the same - only that in death there is no suffering.

A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.

Courtesy is as much a mark of a gentleman as courage.

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.

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time.

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.

Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

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.