Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

... you may be sure there will be no jingo nonsense under my administration.

[Theodore Roosevelt] came down here [Washington DC] looking for war. He did not care whom we fought as long as there was a scrap.

The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the Deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoid peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells

Nationalism, on my opinion, is nothing more than an idealistic rationalization for militarism and aggression.

America... just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable.

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The 'dazzling royals' have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press.

The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

Foreign policy can be the undoing of absolute rulers, tempted to foreign adventure in order to compensate for failure at home or spurred on by domestic adulation.

Perhaps when the next great war comes we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.

Fascism in America will attempt to advance under the banner of Americanism and anti-Fascism.

Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism—how passionately I hate them!

Nationalism made us feel as if we were a unique, chosen people. That's what led us down the path of aggression.

Our involvement in this war is treason to the interests of international socialism.

Both Republicans and Democrats want to use our children as cannon fodder in order to police the world.

As an Englishman, particularly as an Englishman standing upon foreign soil, I am, of course, prepared to argue that every war we have ever fought was a purely defensive war. But I am obliged to take cognizance of the quite simple historical fact that for about one thousand years, since the time indeed when Norwegians ravaged our coasts and a certain Scandinavian landed at Hastings in 1066, every war we have fought happens to have been fought in other people's countries. Now if defense means merely keeping burglars out of the house, what were we doing on all those occasions in other people's houses?

Fascism believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it

It seems incredible that the Russian Government should plunge Europe into war in order to make themselves the protectors of the Serbians.

If our founding fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, the wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

The pamphlet was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.

Militaristic foreign policy is destroying America.

Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.

I think that the religious and the military right wings are just two sides of the same coin if somebody uses God and religion and somebody uses country and security.

We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.

In some states militant nationalism has gone to the lengths of dictatorship, the cult of the absolute or totalitarian state and the glorification of war.