Theodore Roosevelt Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

 

Theodore Roosevelt Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt was an outstanding, self motivated, determined, resolute, genuinely honest, unbiased, fair minded and an All-American icon.

Theodore grew up in New York City, then the shyster capital of the world entrenched in Tammany Hall political cronyism, and corruption where he quickly learned the lesson of what not to do in government. I loved this story of his learning experiences as he worked his way up from local government to state and federal step by step, building experience and gaining priceless knowledge using personal profiling from the bottom up to the presidency.

Excerpts:

He also gave me a piece of advice that I have always remembered, namely, that, if I was not going to earn money, I must even things up by not spending it. As he expressed it, I had to keep the fraction constant, and if I was not able to increase the numerator, then I must reduce the denominator. In other words, if I went into a scientific career, I must definitely abandon all thought of the enjoyment that could accompany a money-making career, and must find my pleasures elsewhere.

My experience in the Police Department taught me that not a few of the worst tenement-houses were owned by wealthy individuals, who hired the best and most expensive lawyers to persuade the courts that it was “unconstitutional” to insist on the betterment of conditions. These business men and lawyers were very adroit in using a word with fine and noble associations to cloak their opposition to vitally necessary movements for industrial fair play and decency. They made it evident that they valued the Constitution, not as a help to righteousness, but as a means for thwarting movements against unrighteousness. After my experience with them I became more set than ever in my distrust of those men, whether business men or lawyers, judges, legislators, or executive officers, who seek to make of the Constitution a fetish for the prevention of the work of social reform, for the prevention of work in the interest of those men, women, and children on whose behalf we should be at liberty to employ freely every governmental agency.

Americans learn only from catastrophes and not from experience.