But, in the final event, the statesman, and the publicist, and the reformer, and the agitator for new things, and the upholder of what is good in old things, all need more than anything else to know human nature, to know the needs of the human soul; and they will find this nature and these needs set forth as nowhere else by the great imaginative writers, whether of prose or of poetry.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)

Autobiography, ch. 9 “Outdoors and Indoors” (1913)
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