Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Prosperity's right hand is industry and her left hand is frugality.

Fundamentally, the basis of all modern progress is the efficiency of labor. And the only sure road to restored prosperity is through the thrift and hard work of our people as a whole.

The quickest and surest way to production, prosperity, and economic growth is through private enterprise. The best way for governments to encourage private enterprise is to establish justice, to enforce contracts, to insure domestic peace and tranquility, to protect private property, and to secure the blessings of liberty including economic liberty - which means to stop putting obstacles in the way of private enterprise.

Acquire Riches by Industry and Frugality.

Competition is the most promising means to achieve and secure prosperity. It alone enables people in their role of consumer to gain from economic progress. It ensures that all advantages which result from higher productivity may eventually be enjoyed.

Industry need not wish, and he that lives upon hopes will die fasting. There are no gains without pains. He that hath a trade hath an estate, and he that hath a calling hath an office of profit and honor; but then the trade must be worked at and the calling followed, or neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay our taxes. If we are industrious, we shall never starve; for at the workingman's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor will the bailiff or the constable enter, for industry pays debts, while idleness and neglect increase them.

In short, the way to wealth, if you desire it, is as plain as the way to market. It depends chiefly on two works, industry and frugality.

Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; with them, everything.

Industry and frugality, as the means of procuring wealth . . . thereby [secures] virtue, it being more difficult for a man in want to act always honestly. . . .

Without labor there is neither wealth, nor comfort, nor progress.

I think it's fairly easy to provide a moral defense of capitalism. It has been - over the last 200 years - the underlying basis for enormous increases in productivity and human welfare and rising living standards, particularly in the United States, and in the industrialized nations but in fact, in most parts of the world.

A market economy cannot thrive absent the well-being of average people, even in a gilded age.

Don't let's lose sight of what creates wealth. It is open markets, it is capitalism.

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

We can't afford to waste people. We can't afford to have people think the game is over before it's begun. We've got to be saying to the Canadian people: you can't tax cut your way to a productive 21st-century economy. You can talk that talk, but it's not going to give you a productive 21st-century economy, because it will scythe apart the public goods that make prosperity possible. That's what we've got to say, and so we shall.

Let honesty and industry be thy constant companions, and spend one penny less than thy clear gains; then shall thy pocket begin to thrive; creditors will not insult, nor want oppress, nor hungerness bite, nor nakedness freeze thee

We want people to take care of themselves. We want people to provide for themselves. We want people to enjoy the fruits of their labors. We want people to enjoy reaching out and making their dreams come true. We want people to realize their life's dreams and passions. You need a growing economy for this.

As it is with an individual, so it is with a nation. One must produce to have, or one will become a have-not.

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.

All industry must be excited by hope.

Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it.

We all want the Greek people to prosper, to be able to provide a good life for their families and their children. That would be good for Greece, that would be good for the European Union, good for the United States, and ultimately, good for the world.

We built this country by making things, by producing goods we could sell.

Labor is discovered to be the grand conqueror, enriching and building up nations more surely than the proudest battles.