Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

If you accept the privilege of public service, you had better understand the responsibilities of public service.

The trust that goes with public service is a heavy burden on those who would lead us.

When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property.

You must come forth to any Publick Service, whereof you may be capable, when you are called unto it.

Pubic business must be done. It will be done one way or another. If wise men refuse it, others will not. If honest men refuse it, others will not.

Public business … must always be done by somebody…. If wise men decline it, others will not; if honest men refuse it, others will not.

Government is a trust, and the officers of the government are trustees; and both the trust and trustees are created for the benefit of the public.

Those who are selected for a limited time to manage public affairs are still of the people, and may do much by their example to encourage, consistently with the dignity of their official functions, that plain way of life which among their fellow-citizens aids integrity and promotes thrift and prosperity.

Some men are born for the public. Nature by fitting them for the service on a broad scale, has stamped them with the evidence of her destination and their duty.

I have an obligation to the people of Illinois, to the Senate and to myself to leave the Senate while I am still eager to serve, not after I tire of serving.

We are here to serve our citizens and not our ambitions.

Choose the manager of your government as you would the manager of your private business.

I've been raised and taught to believe that privilege should lead to responsibility - in fact to greater responsibility.

Two truths are all too often overshadowed in today's political discourse: Public service is a most honorable pursuit, and so is bipartisanship.

Being a public servant, this is a serious job, not like a boxer, you're entertaining people.

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

I've got the greatest job in the world. There's no other job in government where cause and effect is so tightly coupled where you can make a difference every day in so many different ways and in so many different people's lives. It's a great challenge.

As citizens of a free society, we have a duty to look critically at our world. But if we think we know what is wrong, we must act upon that knowledge.

But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.

But there is a corollary to freedom and that's personal responsibility, and the real challenge is how you generate that personal responsibility without imposing it.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

People in positions of power and privilege have a duty to perform at a higher level. If not them, then who?

I think that anything that has privileges have responsibility and all people that is clear about their responsibility has compromise.

Every society naturally divides itself into classes. The author of nature has bestowed on some greater capacities than on others--birth, education, talents and wealth, create distinctions among men as visible and of as much influence as titles, stars and garters. In every society, men of this class will command a superior degree of respect--and if the government is so constituted as to admit but few to exercise the powers of it, it will, according to the natural course of things, be in their hands.