I could carve out of a banana a Justice with more backbone than that.

I have only a second rate brain but I think I have a capacity for action.

[ On the presidency :] I have got such a bully pulpit!

I took the canal zone and let Congress debate, and while the debate goes on the canal does also.

The various admirable movements in which I have been engaged have always developed among their members a large lunatic fringe.

My hat’s in the ring. The fight is on and I’m stripped to the buff.

The New Nationalism puts the national need before sectional or personal advantage.

The man who wrongly holds that every human right is secondary to his profit must now give way to the advocate of human welfare, who rightly maintains that every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it.

It would be a master stroke if those great Powers honestly bent on peace would form a league of peace, not only to keep the peace among themselves, but to prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others. The man or statesman who should bring about such a condition would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.

My position as regards the monied interests can be put in a few words. In every civilized society property rights must be carefully safeguarded; ordinarily and in the great majority of cases, human rights and property rights are fundamentally and in the long run, identical; but when it clearly appears that there is a real conflict between them, human rights must have the upper hand; for property belongs to man and not man to property.