"It is by no means necessary that..." - Quote by Theodore Roosevelt
It is by no means necessary that a great nation should always stand at the heroic level. But no nation has the root of greatness in it unless in time of need it can rise to the heroic mood.
More by Theodore Roosevelt
“Death by violence, death by cold, death by starvation - they are the normal endings of the stately creatures of the wilderness. The sentimentalists who prattle about the peaceful life of nature do not realize its utter mercilessness.”
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
“What I am to be, I am becoming.”
More on National Character
“Americans are a wonderful people: They will always do the right thing--after exhausting every other possible alternative.”
“If we lose the virile, manly qualities, and sink into a nation of mere hucksters, putting gain over national honor, and subordinating everything to mere ease of life, then we shall indeed reach a condition worse than that of the ancient civilizations in the years of their decay.”
“What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.”
More on Greatness
“The genius-in work and in deed-is necessarily a squanderer: the fact that he spends himself constitutes his greatness.”
“In your hands you hold the seeds of failure or the potential for greatness. Your hands are capable, but they must be used and for the right things to reap the rewards you are capable of attaining. The choice is yours.”
“Greatness is not guarding yourself from the people, Greatness is being accepted by the people.”