Theodore Roosevelt on Bravery: Lessons from the Most Courageous Leader of the Twentieth Century

By Theodore Roosevelt

Teddy Roosevelt is the only president in history to deliver a ninety-minute speech directly after being shot in the chest. He’s a Nobel Prize recipient, a Harvard graduate, and he was the youngest President in history to be inaugurated into office. Roosevelt’s force took America by storm in the early twentieth century, and he is regarded as one of the finest leaders ever to take office.

His wisdom even earned him a spot in Mount Rushmore, which has immortalized him along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln.
As a sickly child, Roosevelt was home-schooled his entire life until enrolling at Harvard University, where he studied biology. A year after graduating, he began his political career as the New York City police commissioner, and later as a member of the New York State Assembly, where he led the reform division of the GOP. In the time since his presidency, Roosevelt’s bravery has inspired generations of Americans.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.”

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Release date: Aug 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781632208057

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was an American politician, naturalist, military man, author, and the youngest president of the United States. Known for his larger-than-life persona, Roosevelt is credited with forming the Rough Riders, trust-busting large American companies including Standard Oil, expanding the system of national parks and forests, and negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906. A prolific author, Roosevelt’s topics ranged from foreign policy to the natural world to personal memoirs. Among his most recognized works are The Rough Riders, The Winning of the West, and his Autobiography. In addition to a legacy of written works, Roosevelt is immortalized along with George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honour by President Bill Clinton for his charge up San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, and was given the title of Chief Scout Citizen by the Boy Scouts of America. Roosevelt died suddenly at his home, Sagamore Hill, on January 5, 1919. Roosevelt, along with his niece Eleanor and his cousin Franklin D., is the subject of the 2014 Ken Burns documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.

Book preview

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.

With self-discipline most anything is possible.

Every man among us is more fit to meet the duties and responsibilities of citizenship because of the perils over which, in the past, the nation has triumphed; because of the blood and sweat and tears, the labor and the anguish, through which, in the days that have gone, our forefathers moved on to triumph.

People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

If we stand idly by, if we seek merely swollen, slothful ease and ignoble peace, if we shrink from the hard contests where men must win at hazard of their lives and at the risk of all they hold dear, then the bolder and stronger peoples will pass us by, and will win for themselves the domination of the world.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

Old age is like everything else. To make a success of it, you’ve got to start young.

Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.

You often hear people speaking as if life was like striving upward toward a mountain peak. That is not so. Life is as if you were traveling a ridge crest. You have the gulf of inefficiency on one side and the gulf of wickedness on the other, and it helps not to have avoided one gulf if you fall into the other.

"If in this country we ever have to face a state of things in which on one side stand the men of high ideals who are honest, good, well-meaning, pleasant people, utterly unable to put those ideals into shape in the rough field of practical life, while on the other side are grouped the strong, powerful, efficient men with no ideals: then the end of the Republic will