The man [Grant] who more than any other, save Lincoln, had changed us into a nation whose citizens were all freemen, realized entirely that these fre… - Theodore Roosevelt

If this country is really to go forward along the path of social and economic justice, there must be a new party of nationwide and non-sectional principles, a party where the titular national chiefs and the real state leaders shall be in genuine accord, a party in whose counsels the people shall be supreme, a party that shall represent in the nation and the several states alike the same cause, the cause of human rights and of governmental efficiency. At present both the old parties are controlled by professional politicians in the interests of the privileged classes, and apparently each has set up as its ideal of business and political development a government by financial despotism tempered by make-believe political assassination. Democrat and Republican alike, they represent government of the needy many by professional politicians in the interests of the rich few. This is class government, and class government of a peculiarly unwholesome kind.

Is it only in the army in the Philippines that Americans sometimes commit deeds that cause all other Americans to regret?

[Theodore Roosevelt 1901 relating reports of water torture in the Philippines to lynching in the south]

The citizen must have high ideals, and yet he must be able to achieve them in
practical fashion.