Jul 3, 2026 · 29 min · 11 segments
https://voicesofdemocracy.umd.edu/roosevelt-strenuous-life-1899-speech-text/
In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife, to preach the highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.
I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole.
Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes, to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great.
You men of Illinois have done your share and more than your share in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine.
If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness.
For wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research, work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation.
We admire the man who embodies victorious effort, the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose.
If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune.
But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period not of preparation but of mere enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and above all it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.
In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the state which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife, to preach the highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
A life of ignoble ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual.
I ask only that what every self-respecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole.
Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that peace, is to be the first consideration in their eyes, to be the ultimate goal after which they strive? You men of Chicago have made this city great.
You men of Illinois have done your share and more than your share in making America great, because you neither preach nor practice such a doctrine.
If you are rich and are worth your salt, you will teach your sons that though they may have leisure, it is not to be spent in idleness.
For wisely used leisure merely means that those who possess it, being free from the necessity of working for their livelihood, are all the more bound to carry on some kind of non-remunerative work in science, in letters, in art, in exploration, in historical research, work of the type we most need in this country, the successful carrying out of which reflects most honor upon the nation.
We admire the man who embodies victorious effort, the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life.
Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.
A man can be freed from the necessity of work only by the fact that he or his fathers before him have worked to good purpose.
If the freedom thus purchased is used aright, and the man still does actual work, though of a different kind, whether as a writer or a general, whether in the field of politics or in the field of exploration and adventure, he shows he deserves his good fortune.
But if he treats this period of freedom from the need of actual labor as a period not of preparation but of mere enjoyment, he shows that he is simply a cumberer of the earth's surface, and he surely unfits himself to hold his own with his fellows if the need to do so should again arise.
A mere life of ease is not in the end a very satisfactory life, and above all it is a life which ultimately unfits those who follow it for serious work in the world.
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