If I am defeated for the next nomination, I think it will be by [Charles Evans] Hughes. And I don't think he will allow his name t...o be used unless he really feels that I have no chance to win. I do not think Theodore Roosevelt will allow his name to come before the convention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Roosevelt could always keep ahead with his work, but I cannot do it, and I know it is a grievous fault, but it is too late to reme...dy it. The country must take me as it found me. Wasn't it your mother who had a servant girl who said it was no use for her to try to hurry, that she was a "Sunday chil" and no "Sunday chil" could hurry? I don't think I am a Sunday child, but I ought to have been; then I would have had an excuse for always being late.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Taft, laughing, "What troubles [brother] Charles is, he is afraid Roosevelt will get the credit of making me President and not him...self." To Charles: "I will agree not to minimize the part you played in making me President if you will agree not to minimize the part Roosevelt played."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth is, the whole administration under Roosevelt was demoralized by the system of dealing directly with subordinates. It was... obviated in the State Department and the War Department under [Secretary of State Elihu] Root and me [Taft was the Secretary of War], because we simply ignored the interference and went on as we chose.... The subordinates gained nothing by his assumption of authority, but it was not so in the other departments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He [Roosevelt] has made some speeches that indicate that he is going quite beyond anything that he advocated when he was in the Wh...ite House, and has proposed a program which is absolutely impossible to carry out except by a revision of the Constitution.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When will the men do something besides extend congratulations? I would rather have President Roosevelt say one word to Congress in... favor of amending the Constitution to give women the suffrage than to praise me endlessly!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Mr. Roosevelt, this is my principal request--it is almost the last request I shall ever make of anybody. Before you leave the pres...idential chair, recommend Congress to submit to the Legislatures a Constitutional Amendment which will enfranchise women, and thus take your place in history with Lincoln, the great emancipator. I beg of you not to close your term of office without doing this.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or ...writer or philosopher--a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... [Washington] is always an entertaining spectacle. Look at it now. The present President has the name of Roosevelt, marked faci...al resemblance to Wilson, and no perceptible aversion, to say the least, to many of the policies of Bryan. The New Deal, which at times seems more like a pack of cards thrown helter skelter, some face up, some face down, and then snatched in a free-for-all by the players, than it does like a regular deal, is going on before our interested, if puzzled eyes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Honestly, the real trouble is ... a gang which unfortunately survives--made up mostly of those who were isolationists before Decem...ber seventh and who are actuated today by various motives in their effort to instill disunity in the country.... The best comment I have heard was by Elmer Davis.... "Some people want the United States to win so long as England loses. Some people want the United States to win so long as Russia loses. Some people want the United States to win so long as Roosevelt loses."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »