Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

Panamanians live in a chronic state of insurrection and violence.

[On Russia's civil disorder:] Comrade deputies, the most essential thing now is to overcome the crisis, to restore order in the country.

The lawlessness of frontier life in America has been pictured as a remarkable phenomenon. In reality, it was the natural consequence of indiscriminate mixing of volatile substances.

A mob is the method by which good citizens turn over the law and the government to the criminal or irresponsible classes.

What would happen if we withdrew? Anarchy and confusion.

All revolutions invariably encourage bad characters and potential criminals.

... apostles of anarchy, bloodshed and atheism.

I fear that unless the general government will assume the responsibility of order throughout the land, the anarchy which is now present will become more terrible than has ever been known in the history of the world.

When governments become weak, troubles are certain to erupt.

Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope.

Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

We have confirmed something we only knew in theory, namely that revolution, in which uncontrolled and uncontrollable forces operate imperiously, is blind and destructive, grandiose and cruel.

When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place.

When anarchy is declared, the first thing we do, let's kill all the anarchists.

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

When people accept breaking the law as normal, something happens to the whole society.

The war [WWI] has lasted more than a year. Millions of corpses cover the battlefields. Millions of human beings have been crippled for the rest of their lives. Europe is like a gigantic human slaughterhouse. All civilization, created by the labor of many generations, is doomed to destruction. The most savage barbarism is today celebrating its triumph over all that hitherto constituted the pride of humanity

Violence is the most ubiquitous symptom of a disease spreading through our society—an epidemic of lawlessness which, unless checked in time, could prove fatal to democracy itself.

Today in Russia, we have this extreme form of democracy, which is called anarchy.

Miserable news from Paris. Another Revolution, barricades, the troops of the line fraternizing with the insurgent National Guards, two Generals shot, to more in the hands and tender mercies of the beastly cowardly Paris mob. Those Parisians are the scum of the earth, and Paris is the crater of the volcano, France, and a bottomless pit of revolution and anarchy.

It is then a very unseasonable time to plead law, when swords are in the hands of the vulgare, or to think to restrain them with fear of punishments when they look after liberty and shake off all government.

… a menace to our institutions

The commotions in Ireland were so sudden and so violent that it was hard at first either to discern the cause or apply a remedy to that precipitate rebellion.

Accounts of outrages committed by mobs form the everyday news of the times. They have pervaded the country from New England to Louisiana; they are neither peculiar to the eternal snows of the former nor the burning suns of the latter; they are not the creatures of climate … neither are they confined to the slaveholding or the non-slaveholding states…. Such are the effects of mob law, and such are the scenes becoming more and more frequent in this land so lately famed for love of law and order

The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution.