"Violent excess is sure to provoke violent reaction; and the worst possible policy for our country would be one of violent oscillation between reckless upsetting of property rights, and unscrupulous greed manifested under pretense of protecting those rights. The agitator who preaches hatred and practices slander and untruthfulness, and the visionary who promises perfection and accomplishes only destruction, are the worst enemies of reform; and the man of great wealth who accumulates and uses his wealth without regard to ethical standards, who proļ¬ts by and breeds corruption, and robs and swindles others, is the very worst enemy of property, the very worst enemy of conservatism, the very worst enemy of those ābusiness interestsā that only too often regard him with mean admiration and heatedly endeavor to shield him from the consequences of his iniquity."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Activists from the United StatesMilitary leaders from the United StatesSocial activistsMedal of Honor recipientsNobel laureates from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Theodore_Roosevelt
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Theodore Roosevelt
1858 ā 1919
26. PrƤsident der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika (1901-1909)
420 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Theodore Roosevelt ā
Related Quotes
"We meet to-day, representing the people of this continent, from the Dominion of Canada in the north, to Chile and theā¦"
"We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no lessā¦"
"By sheer force of moral purpose, by clarity of perception, by mastery of detail and benign manipulation of men, he haā¦"
"What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area ofā¦"
"In many respects there is a complete lack of analogy between the civilization of to-day and the only other civilizatiā¦"
"Hitherto every civilization that has arisen has been able to develop only a comparatively few activities; that is, itā¦"
"The whole world is bound together as never before; the bonds are sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but theyā¦"
"In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of secā¦"
"Throughout their early stages the movements of civilizationāfor, properly speaking, there was no one movementāwere veā¦"
"The people of the United States suffer from periodical financial panics to a degree substantially unknown to the otheā¦"