The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)Roosevelt, Theodore
General
The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14)
Roosevelt, Theodore
United States -- Colonial question; United States -- Politics and government
So far, what I have had to say has dealt mainly with our relations
to one another in what may be called the service of the State. But
the basis of good citizenship is the home. A man must be a good son,
husband, and father, a woman a good daughter, wife, and mother, first
and foremost. There must be no shirking of duties in big things or
in little things. The man who will not work hard for his wife and
his little ones, the woman who shrinks from bearing and rearing many
healthy children, these have no place among the men and women who are
striving upward and onward. Of course the family is the foundation of
all things in the State. Sins against pure and healthy family life
are those which of all others are sure in the end to be visited most
heavily upon the nation in which they take place. We must beware,
moreover, not merely of the great sins, but of the lesser ones which
when taken together cause such an appalling aggregate of misery
and wrong. The drunkard, the lewd liver, the coward, the liar, the
dishonest man, the man who is brutal to or neglectful of parents,
wife, or children—of all of these the shrift should be short when we
speak of decent citizenship. Every ounce of effort for good in your
Associations is part of the ceaseless war against the traits which
produce such men. But in addition to condemning the grosser forms of
evil we must not forget to condemn also the evils of bad temper, lack
of gentleness, nagging and whining fretfulness, lack of consideration
for others—the evils of selfishness in all its myriad forms. Each man
or woman must remember his or her duty to all around, and especially to
those closest and nearest, and such remembrance is the best possible
preparation for doing duty for the State as a whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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