Quotable T. Roosevelt

My wife showed me the following quotation, attributed to Theodore Roosevelt:

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer “present” or “not guilty”

which I suspect is apocryphal. I wouldn’t be surprised if it were considerably older and by “older” I mean as in Cicero rather than older as in Lincoln.

However, as I was attempting to determine its authenticity I was struck at just how quotable Roosevelt remains. For example, his comments on a “square deal” from his Autobiography:

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal; and the first, and most elementary, kind of square deal is to give him in advance full information as to just what he can, and what he cannot, legally and properly do. It is absurd, and much worse than absurd, to treat the deliberate lawbreaker as on an exact par with the man eager to obey the law, whose only desire is to find out from some competent Governmental authority what the law is, and then to live up to it. Moreover, it is absurd to treat the size of a corporation as in itself a crime.

probably ring truer today than they did a century ago.

And lots of people are aware of his comment about speaking softly and carrying a big stick although they probably don’t know that Roosevelt himself attributed it to an African proverb.

Here are a few more from him:

We stand equally against government by a plutocracy and government by a mob.

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.