Theodore Roosevelt Quotes

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative', one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary', one who won't go at all.

I'm conservative on some issues, and I'm progressive on others.

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future.

I believe in practicing prudence at least once every two or three years.

The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.

We must respect the past, and mistrust the present, if we wish to provide for the safety of the future.

Extremes are dangerous.

Let's trace the birth of an idea. It's born as rampant radicalism, then it becomes progressivism, then liberalism, then it becomes moderated conservative, outmoded, and gone.

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

Liberalism is but childishness, which is easily brought to reason; but revolution is a force, and one must know how to use it.

Conservatism is the politics of reality.

All great Peoples are conservative; slow to believe in novelties; patient of much error in actualities.

We have a maxim in the House of Commons, and written on the walls of our house, that old ways are safest and surest ways.

We live in an age of prudence. The leaders of the people now generally follow.

The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.

I never dared be radical when young for fear it would make me conservative when old.

To be a Conservative is to prefer the tried to the untried, the fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the super-abundant, the convenient to the perfect present, laughter to utopian bliss.

Revolutionaries themselves are the last people to realize when, through force of time and circumstance, they have gradually become conservatives.

In the political, the social, the economic, even the cultural sphere, the revolutions of our time have been revolutions "against" rather than revolutions "for"... On the whole throughout this period the man--or party--that stood for doing the positive has usually cut a pathetic figure; well meaning but ineffectual, civilized but unrealistic, he was suspect alike to (by both) the ultras of destruction and the ultras of preservation and restoration.

The best position the government could assume would be that of moderation between opposite extremes of Ultra-Toryism and Radicalism

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest — at the command — of his head.

The perils of change are so great the promise of the most hopeful theories is so often deceptive, that it is frequently the wiser part to uphold the existing state of things, if it can be done, even though, in point of argument, it should be utterly indefensible.

The history of the Republican Party shows why, since the Civil War, the nation has been caught in cycles of progressivism and reaction.

For the left, an obsession with the state. For the right, a worship of the market. But as liberals, we place our faith in people. People with power and opportunity in their hands. Our opponents try to divide us with their outdated labels of left and right. But we are not on the left and we are not on the right. We have our own label: Liberal. We are liberals and we own the freehold to the centre ground of British politics. Our politics is the politics of the radical centre. We are governing from the middle, for the middle.

Vessels large may venture more, But little boats should keep near shore.