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Home  »  Respectfully Quoted  »  Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)

Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.

 
NUMBER: 1566
AUTHOR: Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)
QUOTATION: The weakling and the coward are out of place in a strong and free community. In a republic like ours the governing class is composed of the strong men who take the trouble to do the work of government; and if you are too timid or too fastidious or too careless to do your part in this work, then you forfeit your right to be considered one of the governing and you become one of the governed instead—one of the driven cattle of the political arena.
ATTRIBUTION: President THEODORE ROOSEVELT, address at the Harvard Union, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 23, 1907.—“Athletics, Scholarship and Public Service,” The Strenuous Life (vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed.), chapter 27, p. 563 (1926).
SUBJECTS: Public service