"The stream will not permanently rise higher..." - Quote by Theodore Roosevelt
The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.
More by Theodore Roosevelt
“I have already lived and enjoyed as much life as any nine other men I have known.”
“When you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em, 'Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it.”
“I think we are warranted in contending that a society thus constituted, and which may be rendered so admirable an engine of improvement, far from meriting reproach, deserves highly of the community.”
More on Leadership
“Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.”
“Winning the election is a good-news, bad-news kind of thing. Okay, now you're the mayor. The bad news is, now you're the mayor.”
“The men who create powermake an indispensable contributionto the nation's greatness.But the men who question power makea contribution just as indispensablefor they determine whetherwe use poweror power uses us.”
More on Citizenship
“While the principles of our Constitution give just latitude to inquiry, every citizen faithful to it will deem embodied expressions of discontent and open outrages of law and patriotism as dishonorable as they are injurious”
“The influence over government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe, because the corrupting of the whole mass will exceed any private resources of wealth, and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price.”
“Families are incubators for citizen activists.”