Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

If there is not the occasion, you don't get the great statesmen. If Lincoln had lived in peacetime, you would not know his name today.

To be a great leader, one unfortunately needs a war.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

You don't go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

President Lincoln chose to fight a bloody and unpopular war because he believed the enemy had to be defeated. He was right.

Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

For a war correspondent to miss an invasion is like refusing a date with Lana Turner.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.

People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.

The president, clearly as a result of the war and the afterglow of the war, is in a time of great attention.

You can't come away with this cosmic perspective thinking that you are better than others and want to fight. That's why you'll never have astrophysicists leading nations into war.

Among all the upheavals of war with al Qaeda, the surest indicator of the historic stakes is the ongoing rotation of top U.S. government managers - scores at a time - into a bunker deep underground and far from Washington.

War is the trade of Kings.

But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices today than any of you to secure peace.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.

If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.

When you go to war, both sides lose totally.

These are challenging times for all Americans. We face the specter of war abroad and a steady stream of bad economic news at home.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.