President Theodore Roosevelt -
An
American Icon (1858 - 1919)
Our country is forever indebted to President
Theodore Roosevelt. His enthusiastic love for life and the natural world was the
foundation for establishing his legacy that will forever be felt by the citizens of our
country. The all inclusive approach to conservation was the hallmark of his success.

Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier Point, Yosemite Valley, California,
c1906
T.R. Words to live by:
Climbing Into The Arena
It is not the critic who
counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds
could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena, whose face is
marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly...who knows the great
enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at least knows
in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who have never known neither victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, 1910
"Optimism
is a good characteristic, but if carried to an excess, it becomes foolishness. We are
prone to speak of the resources of this country as inexhaustible; this is not so."
Seventh Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1907
"We of an
older generation can get along with what we have, though with growing hardship; but in
your full manhood and womanhood you will want what nature once so bountifully supplied and
man so thoughtlessly destroyed; and because of that want you will reproach us, not for
what we have used, but for what we have wasted...So any nation which in its youth lives
only for the day, reaps without sowing, and consumes without husbanding, must expect the
penalty of the prodigal whose labor could with difficulty find him the bare means of
life."
"Arbor Day - A Message to
the School-Children of the United States" April 15, 1907
"There can
be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country."
Confession of Faith Speech, Progressive National Convention, Chicago,
IL, August 6, 1912
"Defenders
of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our
country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild
things sometimes seek to champion them by saying the 'the game belongs to the people.' So
it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest
good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to
which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including
the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting
the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life
and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially
democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."
A Book-Lover's Holidays in the Open, 1916
"The
conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem
it will avail us little to solve all others."
Address to the Deep Waterway Convention, Memphis, TN, October 4, 1907