The Strenuous Life: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, Volume 12 (of 14) — John Shaqi
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
Discarding the two extremes, the men who deliberately work for evil,
and the men who are unwilling or incapable of working for good, there
remains the great mass of men who do desire to be efficient, who do
desire to make this world a better place to live in, and to do what
they can toward achieving cleaner minds and more wholesome bodies. To
these, after all, we can only say: Strive manfully for righteousness,
and strive so as to make your efforts for good count. You are not to be
excused if you fail to try to make things better; and the very phrase
“trying to make things better” implies trying in practical fashion. One
man’s capacity is for one kind of work and another man’s capacity for
another kind of work. One affects certain methods and another affects
entirely different methods. All this is of little concern. What is of
really vital importance is that something should be accomplished, and
that this something should be worthy of accomplishment. The field is
of vast size, and the laborers are always too few. There is not the
slightest excuse for one sincere worker looking down upon another
because he chooses a different part of the field and different
implements. It is inexcusable to refuse to work, to work slackly or
perversely, or to mar the work of others.
No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency. He is
bound to do all the good possible. Yet he must consider the question
of expediency, in order that he may do all the good possible, for
otherwise he will do none. As soon as a politician gets to the point
of thinking that in order to be “practical” he has got to be base,
he has become a noxious member of the body politic. That species of
practicability eats into the moral sense of the people like a cancer,
and he who practices it can no more be excused than an editor who
debauches public decency in order to sell his paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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