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The people who say that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are unfit to live in a free community.Ģ. You can no more have freedom without striving and suffering for it than you can win success as a banker or a lawyer without labor and effort, without self-denial in youth and the display of a ready and alert intelligence in middle age. A great many of our men in business, or of our young men who are bent on enjoying life (as they have a perfect right to do if only they do not sacrifice other things to enjoyment), rather plume themselves upon being good citizens if they even vote yet voting is the very least of their duties, Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort. In so far as the community grows to think rightly, it will likewise grow to regard the young man of means who shirks his duty to the State in time of peace as being only one degree worse than the man who thus shirks it in time of war. No man has a right to shirk his political duties under whatever plea of pleasure or business and while such shirking may be pardoned in those of small cleans it is entirely unpardonable in those among whom it is most common-in the people whose circumstances give them freedom in the struggle for life. It ought to be axiomatic in this country that every man must devote a reasonable share of his time to doing his duty in the Political life of the community. A race must be strong and vigorous it must be a race of good fighters and good breeders, else its wisdom will come to naught and its virtue be ineffective and no sweetness and delicacy, no love for and appreciation of beauty in art or literature, no capacity for building up material prosperity can possibly atone for the lack of the great virile virtues.īut this is aside from my subject, for what I wish to talk of is the attitude of the American citizen in civic life. In a free republic the ideal citizen must be one willing and able to take arms for the defense of the flag, exactly as the ideal citizen must be the father of many healthy children. No man can be a good citizen who is not a good husband and a good father, who is not honest in his dealings with other men and women, faithful to his friends and fearless in the presence of his foes, who has not got a sound heart, a sound mind, and a sound body exactly as no amount of attention to civil duties will save a nation if the domestic life is undermined, or there is lack of the rude military virtues which alone can assure a country's position in the world. Of course, in one sense, the first essential for a man's being a good citizen is his possession of the home virtues of which we think when we call a man by the emphatic adjective of manly.

Roosevelt chided those who excused themselves from politics because they were too busy it was every man's duty to devote some time to maintaining good government. Given while serving as a New York assemblyman, TR's address on the 'Duties of American Citizenship' delved into both the theoretical reasons why every man should be involved in politics and the practical means of serving in that capacity. Theodore Roosevelt, “Duties of American Citizenship” Abraham Lincoln, 'The Gettysburg Address'ġ. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 'Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation'

Winston Churchill, 'Blood, Sweat, and Tears' Theodore Roosevelt, 'Citizenship in a Republic' General Douglas MacArthur, 'Duty, Honor, Country' Frederick Douglass, 'What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?' Kennedy, 'The Decision to Go to the Moon' Ronald Reagan, '40th Anniversary of D-Day' Patrick Henry, 'Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!' Theodore Roosevelt, 'Strength and Decency' General Douglas MacArthur, 'Farewell Address to Congress' Ronald Reagan, 'Remarks at the Brandenburg Gate' Marcus Tullius Cicero, 'The First Oration Against Catiline' William Faulkner, 'Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech' Charles de Gaulle, 'The Appeal of 18 June' Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 'First Inaugural Address' Theodore Roosevelt, 'The Man with the Muck-rake' Ronald Reagan, 'Address to the Nation on the Challenger' Lou Gehrig, 'Farewell to Baseball Address'

Winston Churchill, 'We Shall Fight on the Beaches' Theodore Roosevelt, 'Duties of American Citizenship'

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