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 »
We are, to put it mildly, in a mess, and there is a strong chance that we shall have exterminated ourselves by the end of the cent...ury. Our only consolation will have to be that, as a species, we have had an exciting term of office.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"If Washington were President now, he would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and theorists imagine tha...t our society can be handled with gloves or long poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office, and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will be."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Her mind is inferior to that of man, and we know that it requires the strongest of minds to become a good politician.... She has n...ot sufficient stability of character. She would always follow the opinions of her father, brother or husband ... and this might do more hurt than good.... There is no need of it. There are men enough who have nothing else to do who can transact all necessary business.... If permitted to study politics she would understand the art of governing and she might usurp the authority of men and it would be rather revolting to our feelings to see her holding it over the lords of creation.... She is too fastidious. This needs no comment.... If woman should have the control of affairs, we should soon see woman placed in every department of office in the country, thus throwing many of our most distinguished men out of office, and of course out of employment, or they would not do anything else to support themselves, and would soon become pests to security.... she would soon be able to converse intelligently on the subject of politics, and on this subject equal men.... If we should see ladies attending conventions, traveling about the country in great carts drawn by many yoke of oxen, waving their pocket handkerchiefs to assembled multitudes, it would greatly shock our sensibilities.... She was never designed for it. Her eyes were never made to be spoiled in plodding over political trash.... I presume it would be quite as easy to give 40 times 40 reasons why gentlemen should not engage in politics with such fiery zeal that they sometimes do, as it is to give 40 why ladies should not engage in them as well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Now for civil service reform. Legislation must be prepared and executive rules and maxims. We must limit and narrow the area of pa...tronage. We must diminish the evils of office-seeking. We must stop interference of federal officers with elections. We must be relieved of congressional dictation as to appointments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As the term of my relief from this place [Washington, D.C.] approaches, it's drudgery becomes more nauseating and intolerable, and... my impatience to be with you at Monticello increases daily.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas h...e is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded anothe...r out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »