Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.
I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
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.
There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.
No great intellectual thing was ever done by great effort.
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.
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.
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.
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.
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.
Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.
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.
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.
When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer 'Present' or 'Not guilty.'
I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.
The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.
Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
Big jobs usually go to the men who prove their ability to outgrow small ones.