WIST Quotations

Rogers, Will -- Essay (1928-05-12), “More Letters from a Self-Made Diplomat to His President,” Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 200, No. 46

Dave — Fri, 21 Mar 2025 19:32:22 +0000

So we started in to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. Up to now our calling card to Mexico or Central America had been a gunboat or a bunch of Violets shaped like Marines. We could never understand why Mexico wasent just crazy about us; for we always had their good-will, and Oil and coffee and minerals, at heart.

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist
Essay (1928-05-12), “More Letters from a Self-Made Diplomat to His President,” Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 200, No. 46

Excerpted in Donald Day (ed.), The Autobiography of Will Rogers, ch. 14 (1949), which indicates Rogers' trip to Mexico was in December 1927. The text there is the same except at the very beginning, where it reads "We've started in to pay ..."

Shortened variant:

I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about us, for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.

Roosevelt, Theodore -- Speech (1910-08-31), “The New Nationalism,” John Brown Memorial Park dedication, Osawatomie, Kansas

Dave — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 14:55:29 +0000

Of all the questions which can come before this nation, short of the actual preservation of its existence in a great war, there is none which compares in importance with the great central task of leaving this land even a better land for our descendants than it is for us, and training them into a better race to inhabit the land and pass it on. Conservation is a great moral issue for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)
Speech (1910-08-31), “The New Nationalism,” John Brown Memorial Park dedication, Osawatomie, Kansas

Roosevelt, Theodore -- Speech (1910-08-31), “The New Nationalism,” John Brown Memorial Park dedication, Osawatomie, Kansas

Dave — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 13:46:02 +0000

Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us. I ask nothing of the nation except that it so behave as each farmer here behaves with reference to his own children. That farmer is a poor creature who skins the land and leaves it worthless to his children. The farmer is a good farmer who, having enabled the land to support himself and to provide for the education of his children leaves it to them a little better than he found it himself. I believe the same thing of a nation.

Roosevelt, Theodore -- Autobiography, ch. 11 “The Natural Resources of the Nation” (1913)

Dave — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:06:52 +0000

The idea that our natural resources were inexhaustible still obtained, and there was as yet no real knowledge of their extent and condition. The relation of the conservation of natural resources to the problems of National welfare and National efficiency had not yet dawned on the public mind. The reclamation of arid public lands in the West was still a matter for private enterprise alone; and our magnificent river system, with its superb possibilities for public usefulness, was dealt with by the National Government not as a unit, but as a disconnected series of pork-barrel problems, whose only real interest was in their effect on the reëlection or defeat of a Congressman here and there — a theory which, I regret to say, still obtains.

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, statesman, conservationist, writer; US President (1901–09)
Autobiography, ch. 11 “The Natural Resources of the Nation” (1913)

Writing of 1901, when he had just succeeded to the Presidency.