Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Nobody owes anybody a living, but everybody is entitled to a chance.

Liberty: Give to every man the fruit of his own labor -- the labor of his hands and of his brain.

In an ideal world, no one should get something for nothing.

If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

If someone is going to profit from your work, they need to earn it.

The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people.

Those who work ought to live better than those that don't.

There is nothing inherently fair about equalizing incomes. If the government penalizes you for working harder than somebody else, that is unfair. If you save your money but retire with the same pension as a free-spending neighbor, that is also unfair.

I don't like indecent, unearned wealth. But it is legitimate for an entrepreneur who has created something to make a good living.

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

It is against the eternal nature of things that the lazy man and the laborious man, the spendthrift and the man of economy, the foolish and the wise, should obtain and enjoy an equal amount of goods.

Whatever their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights.

I believe in capitalism but in fair capitalism.

The tax program is based upon a broad and just social and economic purpose ... not to destroy wealth, but to create a broader range of opportunity, to restrain the growth of unwholesome and sterile accumulations.

When they [most people] get a [government] benefit, they assume that God gave them it to them, But most people don’t want to pay for someone else’s undeserved benefits.

I've tried to give a dollar and 25 cents in work for every dollar paid me.

If people work for me over the years, I expect them to be paid what they're owed, but I don't expect them to be paid more than they earn.

Pay equity matters because those dollars add up over time.

We like to think that people have to work for their money.

I don't think anybody deserves anything than what they already have because I believe everyone gets what they deserve.

You never get what you deserve; only what you have the leverage to negotiate.

Remember, most of us got something for nothing the first time just by showing up here at birth. Now we have to qualify.

Since this is an era when many people are concerned about 'fairness' and 'social justice,' what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?

The idea that we need to “pay our dues” is a lie told to us by people who wanted our efforts and labor on the cheap.

Start trying to work out who deserves what, and before long you'll spend the rest of your days weeping for each and every person in the world.