Military Leaders From The United States

"Nothing could be a more serious violation of public trust than to consciously make a war based on false claims."

"But you don't have a chance if you can't find a job. I don't think it penetrates the minds of this Administration what it must be like for a factory worker to arrive home to his family with the news that he's been laid off. What it must be like not to know what the future holds for your children, because you don't know what the future holds for you. What it must be like to see the government take hundreds of billions of dollars that could be used to fund job training, unemployment benefits, or jobs programs — and instead to send that money off to people who have such staggering wealth that the new money won't make the tiniest improvement in their lifestyle. What it must be like to be told that tax cuts for the rich are necessary to create jobs for working people, and then to see jobs fall month after month for more than 30 months. If that doesn't break your heart, you don't have a heart."

"We live in a liberal democracy....That's what we created in this country. I think we should be very clear on this. You know, this country was founded on the principles of the Enlightenment... It was the idea that people could talk, reason, have dialogue, discuss the issues. It wasn't founded on the idea that someone would get struck by a divine inspiration and know everything right from wrong. I mean, people who founded this country had religion, they had strong beliefs, but they believed in reason, in dialogue, in civil discourse. We can't lose that in this country. We've got to get it back."

"I am saying what I believe. And I'm being drawn into the political process because of what I believe and what I've said about it. So it's precisely the opposite of a man like Tom DeLay, who is only motivated by politics and says whatever he needs to say to get the political purpose. And so, you know, it couldn't be more diametrically opposed, and I couldn't be more opposed than I am to Tom DeLay. You know, Wolf, when our airmen were flying over Kosovo, Tom DeLay led the House Republicans to vote not to support their activities, when American troops were in combat. To me, that's a real indicator of a man who is motivated not by patriotism or support for the troops, but for partisan political purposes."

"G. Gordon Liddy says that Democrats haven't given the president enough credit. I think the president deserves full credit. In fact I think he should be held fully accountable."

"I have grown up with guns all my life, but people who like assault weapons they should join the United States Army, we have them."

"In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down violence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. As things are now, such power to command peace throughout the world could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and on certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind."

"In the 50 years since caricature became a feature of American journalism," I pointed out, "no man has been the subject of so many cartoons as Roosevelt. A cartoon composite of him would include Don Quixote, Tamerlane, Napoleon, Ananias, Cromwell, Wallenstein, Peter the Great, the Wild Horse of Tartary, Dr. Dowie, a prize-fighter, Savonarola, a circus performer, a hyena, a snapping turtle, the Angel of Peace, Ivan the Terrible, Mohammed, and Moses."

"Teddy had been far to the left for a Republican-but still right of center as far as the Democrats were concerned-and had put into effect a lot of liberal ideas such as conservation of natural resources and the checking of 'malefactors of great wealth.' Taft was an ultra-conservative and partial to the special interests. He was not willing to use the full power of the presidency."

"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they learn their place again."

"I felt at the time Mr. Roosevelt had a good deal of the usual conviction of the powerful man in public life that correction should be left to him, a little resentment that a profession outside his own should be stealing his thunder."

"He hammered at the effects of privilege, pursued "malefactors of great wealth," but was not willing to do the hard studying of the causes which produced the malefactors."

"Must be President some day. A man you can't cajole, can't frighten, can't buy."

"You must always remember that the president is about six."

"If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist. When it comes to Wall Street reform, that must be our bottom line. This is true not just because of the risk to our economy of another collapse and another bailout; it is also true because the current extreme concentration of ownership in the financial industry allows a very small number of huge financial institutions to have far too much economic and political power over this country. If Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican trustbuster, were alive today, he would say, "Break 'em up." And he would be right."

"More than a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt recognized the danger of massive wealth and income inequality and what it meant to the economic and political well-being of the country. In addition to busting up the big trusts of his time, he fought for the creation of a progressive estate tax to reduce the enormous concentration of wealth that existed during the Gilded Age. "The absence of effective state, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power," the Republican president said. "The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is passed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in.. a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate." Roosevelt spoke those words on August 31, 1910. They are even more relevant today."

"Roosevelt himself typified the weaknesses of the middle class fight against trustifying capitalism. After this investigation of the Meat Trust, it was clear that Theodore Roosevelt's talk about "trust-busting" was a mere gesture. He saw the popular demand for reform and took it up as a political maneuver. He played up to the small capitalists with a few prosecutions under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. He was violent in denouncing Big Business and the "malefactors of great wealth," as he called them. But he did nothing to stop Morgan's U. S. Steel Corporation when it took over the Tennessee Coal & Iron Co. in the panic of 1907. No one took his anti-trust talk very seriously. He was an imperialist employing "dollar diplomacy" to build up American colonies."

"Theodore was the first president in the distinctively modern mold: he had a sense of drama and timing and a natural grasp of how to exploit the press to create a persona for himself in the eyes of the people. Beyond that, TR, as he was commonly known, had a rare ability to make personal use of popular causes and resentments. It was the age of "progressivism," a vague term, but one that connoted a new readiness to use the power of government for all sorts of grand things. H.L. Mencken, the great libertarian journalist and close observer and critic of presidents, compared him to the German kaiser, Wilhelm II, and shrewdly summed him up: "The America that [Theodore] Roosevelt dreamed of was always a sort of swollen Prussia, truculent without and regimented within.""

"This was a period of confusion. The ancient concepts of the rights of man was in conflict with the expansion and needs of big business and mass production. ...[O]ur emotions were inevitably attracted by the dynamic quality of Theodore Roosevelt (whose attachments to the principles of social justice has never been sufficiently developed by his biographers) and by the qualities of leadership in social reform... being demonstrated on the political plane by Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson."

"Like many people, I was an ardent admirer of Theodore Roosevelt. ...He had recommended to the people 's book How the Other Half Lives. I had read it, and Theodore Roosevelt's inaugural address of 1905, and had straightaway felt that the pursuit of social justice would be my vocation."

"(Would you have taken the same position against the Republicans if that party had been in power in 1914?) AP: Of course. You see, we tried very hard in 1916—wasn’t it [[Charles Evans Hughes|[Charles Evans] Hughes]] running against Wilson that year?—to get the Republicans to put federal suffrage in their platform, and we failed. We also failed with the Democrats. Then we tried to get the support of Mr. Hughes himself. Our New York State committee worked very hard on Mr. Hughes, and they couldn’t budge him. So we went to see former President [Theodore] Roosevelt at his home at Oyster Bay to see if he could influence Mr. Hughes. And I remember so vividly what Mr. Roosevelt said. He said, “You know, in political life you must always remember that you not only must be on the right side of a measure, but you must be on the right side at the right time.” He told us that that was the great trouble with Mr. Hughes, that Mr. Hughes is certainly for suffrage, but he can’t seem to know that he must do it in time. So Mr. Hughes started on his campaign around the country, and when he came to Wyoming, where women were already voting, he wouldn’t say he was for the suffrage amendment. And he went on and on, all around the country. Finally, when he came to make his final speech of the campaign in New York, he had made up his mind, and he came out strongly for the federal suffrage amendment. So it was true what Mr. Roosevelt had said about him."

"The peace the President had made possible at Portsmouth was the result of just such an inexplicable ability to impose his singular charge upon plural power. By sheer force of moral purpose, by clarity of perception, by mastery of detail and benign manipulation of men, he had become, as Henry Adams admiringly wrote him, "the best herder of Emperors since Napoleon.""

"In America, we have a figure from history from 1897 named Teddy Roosevelt. He was a wealthy man, who grew up in a privileged situation and who fought on the front lines. He put together his own men — hand chose them — and went to battle. You are like the Middle East version of Teddy Roosevelt."

"A crucial embellishment of the origin myth and key element of the national identity has been the myth of the frontier, analyzed in Richard Slotkin's Gunfighter Nation (1992), the last volume of a fascinating trilogy. He describes Theodore Roosevelt's belief that the West was won thanks to American arms, "the means by which progress and nationality will be achieved." That success, Roosevelt continued, "depends on the heroism of men who impose on the course of events the latent virtues of their 'race."" Roosevelt saw conflict on the frontier producing a species of virile "fighters and breeders" who would eventually generate a new leadership class. Militarism thus went hand in hand with the racialization of history's protagonists. No slouch as an imperialist, Roosevelt soon took the frontier myth abroad, seeing Asians as Apaches and the Philippines as Sam Huston's Texas in the process of being seized from Mexico. For Roosevelt, Slotkin writes, "racial violence [was] the principle around which both individual character and social organization develop.""

"Death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there'd have been a fight."

"He was a great patriot, a great man; above all, a great American. His country was the ruling, mastering passion of his life from the beginning even unto the end."

"[A] great American statesman whose vision and superb courage I had always admired—Theodore Roosevelt."

"From Ulysses Grant to William McKinley, the prevailing conservative doctrine was a severe and self defeating laissez faire that left the big fish to eat the little fish while preaching the merits of social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest. Good presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were those who dared risk the power of government to challenge this."

"The Republican Party, then as always, was more economically and ethnically homogenous than the Democratic Party, but it too, in the manner of mass-based, ‘‘catch-all’’ American parties, contained its own conflicting elements. Under Theodore Roosevelt’s leadership in the century’s first decade, the Republicans had bid for a brief season to recapture their birthright claim to be the party of reform. But TR had shepherded his progressive followers out of the Republican fold and into the third-party ‘‘Bull Moose’’ schism of 1912. He thereby ensured the election of Wilson and contributed as well to the consolidation of conservative rule in the GOP. Some former Bull Moosers, like Chicago reformer and future New Deal secretary of the interior Harold Ickes, became Democrats in all but name; others, like Nebraska’s Senator George Norris, were relegated to an impotent minority in party councils during the triumphal conservative ascendancy of the 1920s."

"There was something about him which frightened the timid and the conventional and the men who in their walks, never stray from the well-trodden and dusty paths of party platitudes. The commonplace thought him violent, the pedantic thought him unprincipled, the correct thought him undignified, the kind of stern party men that treat the party headquarters as if they were the temple of their faith thought him simply wicked. But the common people heard him gladly, and they thronged to greet him and to listen to his speeches."

"My own state of New York has given men like Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Stimson, Elihu Root, Charles Evan Hughes, and Thomas Dewey. These were men whose credos as 'progressive conservatives,' to use Stimson's own description, were built on their conviction, first, that the primary and overriding requirement of all government is that it should not infringe upon the essential liberties of the individual, and, second, that within this limitation government could and must be made a powerful instrument for the enhancement of individual citizens by group action."

"The vast majority of Americans cannot afford this panacea from a Republican nominee who has denounced the progressive income tax as the invention of Karl Marx. I am afraid he has confused Karl Marx with Theodore Roosevelt -- that obscure Republican president who sought and fought for a tax system based on ability to pay. Theodore Roosevelt was not Karl Marx, and the Republican tax scheme is not tax reform."

"The whole family [of President Theodore Roosevelt] were fiends when it came to reading. No newspapers. Never a moment was allowed to go to waste; from the oldest to the youngest they always had a book or magazine before them. The President in particular would devour a book, and it was no uncommon thing for him to go entirely through three or four volumes in the course of an evening. Likewise we frequently saw one of the children stretched out on the floor flat on his stomach eating a piece of candy with his face buried in book."

"I am not attempting here a full appreciation of Colonel Roosevelt. He will be known for all time as one of the great men of America. I am only giving you this personal recollection as a little contribution to his memory, as one that I can make from personal knowledge and which is now known only to myself. His conversation about birds was made interesting by quotations from poets. He talked also about politics, and in the whole of his conversation about them there was nothing but the motive of public spirit and patriotism. I saw enough of him to know that to be with him was to be stimulated in the best sense of the word for the work of life. Perhaps it is not yet realised how great he was in the matter of knowledge as well as in action. Everybody knows that he was a great man of action in the fullest sense of the word. The Press has always proclaimed that. It is less often that a tribute is paid to him as a man of knowledge as well as a man of action. Two of your greatest experts in natural history told me the other day that Colonel Roosevelt could, in that department of knowledge, hold his own with experts. His knowledge of literature was also very great, and it was knowledge of the best. It is seldom that you find so great a man of action who was also a man of such wide and accurate knowledge. I happened to be impressed by his knowledge of natural history and literature and to have had first-hand evidence of both, but I gather from others that there were other fields of knowledge in which he was also remarkable."

"The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought. That this should be so terribly apparent in a country whose symbol is democracy, is very significant of the tremendous power of the majority. [...] Evidently we have not advanced very far from the condition that confronted Wendell Phillips. Today, as then, public opinion is the omnipresent tyrant; today, as then, the majority represents a mass of cowards, willing to accept him who mirrors its own soul and mind poverty. That accounts for the unprecedented rise of a man like Roosevelt. He embodies the very worst element of . A politician, he knows that the majority cares little for ideals or integrity. What it craves is display. It matters not whether that be a dog show, a prize fight, the lynching of a "nigger," the rounding up of some petty offender, the marriage exposition of an heiress, or the acrobatic stunts of an ex-president. The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass. Thus, poor in ideals and vulgar of soul, Roosevelt continues to be the man of the hour. On the other hand, men towering high above such political pygmies, men of refinement, of culture, of ability, are jeered into silence as mollycoddles. It is absurd to claim that ours is the era of individualism. Ours is merely a more poignant repetition of the phenomenon of all history: every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass. Today, as ever, the few are misunderstood, hounded, imprisoned, tortured, and killed."

"In the same period ex-President Theodore Roosevelt loudly recalled his successful amputation of land from Colombia: "I took the Canal Zone and let Congress debate," said the proud Nobel Peace Prize winner as he related how he had invented Panama. Colombia soon afterward received $25 million in indemnity: it was the price of a country that was born so that the United States could have a route between two oceans."

"Combat readiness was the concern of President Theodore Roosevelt when he initiated an early version of the Army Physical Fitness Test for officers, known as the Annual Test Ride. He had observed "field officers who were physically unable to ride even a few miles at an increased gait," and he announced that it was "essential that field officers of the line of the Army should be at all times physically fit and able to perform the duties pertaining to their positions" (U.S. War Department, 1907a). The President's solution was explicit: he told the Secretary of War that as I believe that such physical fitness can only be demonstrated by actual physical tests, I desire that you give the necessary directions ..., and he outlined mandatory tests, such as "cavalry marches of not less than 30 miles per day for three days in succession, under conditions suitable to the making of forced marches in active field operations" (U.S. War Department, 1907b). He also wanted the names reported for any officers who fell out of these marches and directed that "appropriate action be taken in the cases of all officers found not qualified physically for active service.""

"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."

"It was often said that Roosevelt craved the limelight, that he set out to be, as one observer put it, "the bride at every wedding, the corpse at every funeral." The youngest man to become president, he was also the most energetic, zestful chief executive up to that time. Unlike many of his predecessors, he delighted in being president and was sorry to see his term end. He was fearless, decisive, ambitious, proud, and irresistibly charming to men and women alike. He loved children and often took time to romp with them or gather them round for a story. A gifted raconteur, he captivated listeners with tales of his adventures out West. He detested dirty jokes, however, and typically walked away in the middle of a story as soon as he detected its off-color nature. Whether delivering speeches before large crowds or engaged in a private conversation, Roosevelt spoke forcefully in crisp, clipped tones and gesticulated constantly, his fist pounding the air to emphasize a point, his head jerking to and fro with each word. But he was also a good listener, capable of remaining stock still for extended periods totally engrossed in the words of others. He had a prodigious, apparently photographic memory. He often stunned visitors by reciting whole passages of a book he had read decades before. He explained that with concentrated the page seemed to appear in his mind's eye and he simply read from it."

"You remember that, at the close of Theodore Roosevelt's second term as President, he went over to Africa to make war on some of his ancestors. You remember that, at the close of his expedition, he visited the capitals of Europe; and that he was wined and dined, dignified and glorified by all the Kaisers and Czars and Emperors of the Old World. He visited Potsdam while the Kaiser was there; and, according to the accounts published in the American newspapers, he and the Kaiser were soon on the most familiar terms. They were hilariously intimate with each other, and slapped each other on the back. After Roosevelt had reviewed the Kaiser's troops, according to the same accounts, he became enthusiastic over the Kaiser's legions and said: “If I had that kind of an army, I could conquer the world.” He knew the Kaiser then just as well as he knows him now. He knew that he was the Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin. And yet, he permitted himself to be entertained by that Beast of Berlin; had his feet under the mahogany of the Beast of Berlin; was cheek by jowl with the Beast of Berlin. And, while Roosevelt was being entertained royally by the German Kaiser, that same Kaiser was putting the leaders of the Socialist Party in jail for fighting the Kaiser and the Junkers of Germany. Roosevelt was the guest of honor in the white house of the Kaiser, while the Socialists were in the jails of the Kaiser for fighting the Kaiser. Who then was fighting for democracy? Roosevelt? Roosevelt, who was honored by the Kaiser, or the Socialists who were in jail by order of the Kaiser? “Birds of a feather flock together.” ... If Theodore Roosevelt is the great champion of democracy —the arch foe of autocracy , what business had he as the guest of honor of the Prussian Kaiser? And when he met the Kaiser, and did honor to the Kaiser, under the terms imputed to him, wasn't it pretty strong proof that he himself was a Kaiser at heart? Now, after being the guest of Emperor Wilhelm, the Beast of Berlin, he comes back to this country, and wants you to send ten million men over there to kill the Kaiser; to murder his former friend and pal. Rather queer, isn't it? And yet, he is the patriot, and we are the traitors. I challenge you to find a Socialist anywhere on the face of the earth who was ever the guest of the Beast of Berlin, except as an inmate of his prison—the elder Liebknecht and the younger Liebknecht, the heroic son of his immortal sire."

"First of all, Theodore Roosevelt and Charles W. Fairbanks, candidates for President and Vice-President, respectively, deny the class struggle and this almost infallibly fixes their status as friends of capital and enemies of labor. They insist that they can serve both; but the fact is obvious that only one can be served and that one at the expense of the other. Mr. Roosevelt's whole political career proves it."

"That the principles for which these three men stood might be still more firmly established destiny raised up Theodore Roosevelt. To political freedom he strove to add economic freedom. By building the Panama Canal he brought into closer relationship the east and the west and realized the vision that inspired Columbus in his search for a new passage to the Orient."

"What she liked about him were his "progressive ideas," or his ideas that everybody should get a "square deal"... not just big business owners. ...Roosevelt thought it was time for reforms—time to put some limits on big business, to drive out corrupt politicians, to provide better opportunities for working people, and to improve conditions in the cities. ..."Out of the period ...a whole generation ...emerged... who had a great passion for social justice," Perkins said years later."

"You said the war would pay for itself in fruit baskets. You said that our soldiers would march in the streets of Havana and people would shower them with bananas and cigars. That didn't happen. Would you like to look into the camera and apologize to the American people?"

"...In 1907, Theodore Roosevelt, who relished most forms of aggression, dispatched the Great White Fleet around the world with the intention (not always fulfilled) of showcasing the new, trans-oceanic capacities of American naval power."

"The name Roosevelt has this legendary force in our country at this time."

"The Republicans did likewise. They nominated one who had already made a reputation for fighting dishonest politicians: Theodore Roosevelt. Young and aristocratic, Assemblyman Roosevelt had been among those who had "revolted" against Blaine."

"As quoted in Lincoln's Enduring Legacy Perspective from Great Thinkers, Great Leaders, and the American Experiment By John Barr, 2011, P.166"

"In 1908, as he prepared to retire from the presidency, Theodore Roosevelt reflected that his “business” as a Republican leader had been:"

"Roosevelt was a great personality, a great activist, a great preacher of the moralities, a great controversialist, a great showman. He dominated his era as he dominated conversations ... the masses loved him; he proved to be a great popular idol and a great vote getter."