Theodore Roosevelt on Business Quotes

"Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism."

"Labor is the property of the laborer; it is his capital."

"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."

"It is not the critic who counts... The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

"A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be either great or a democracy."

"The absence of reward should not be a cause for the absence of effort."

"We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth."

"Every man of great wealth who does not use it for the benefit of the community... is a source of danger."

"No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause."

"Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; it is a positive good in the world."

"The big corporation, like the big individual, must be held to a strict accountability for its actions."

"I am only an average man, but, by George, I work harder at it than the average man."

"Great corporations exist only because they are created and safeguarded by our institutions; and it is therefore our right and our duty to see that they work in harmony with these institutions."

"The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything."

"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character!"

"Business must be conducted in the interest of the public."

"Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike."

"I am for business. But I am for the people first."

"In the long run, the most unpleasant truth is a safer companion than a pleasant falsehood."

"No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man's permission when we require him to obey it."

"The way to help the man who works is to help the man who provides the work."

"The shopkeeper must be a good shopkeeper before he can be a good citizen."

"The great corporations are the creatures of the State, and the State has the right to control them."

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

"The government must see to it that the cards are not stacked, which is totally different from helping a man to win with the cards as they are."

"Efficiency must be produced by the spirit of the people."

"Success... is the result of hard work and the ability to seize the opportunity."

"The successful man, whether in business or politics, who has risen by crooked methods... is a source of moral contagion."

"Every man who has at heart the real welfare of the country... should realize that the business of the country is the business of the people."

"Practical efficiency is common, and up to a certain point, is necessary; but it is the soul that matters."

"We wish to control big business so as to secure among other things good wages for the wage-workers and reasonable prices for the consumers."

"Where men are gathered together in great masses it inevitably results that they must work far more largely through combinations than where they live scattered and remote from one another... Under present-day conditions it is necessary to have corporations in the business world as it is to have organizations, unions, among wage workers."

"Honesty first; then courage; then the exercise of common sense; and finally the atmosphere of discipline."