“Don’t let anyone impose on you. Don’t be quarrelsome, but stand up for your rights. If you've got to fight, fight hard and well. To my mind, a coward is the only thing meaner than a liar.”
Talk to schoolchildren in Oyster Bay, Christmastime (1898) http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly, as quoted in The Bully Pulpit : A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (2002) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 22
1890s
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Theodore Roosevelt 445
American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858–1919Related quotes
Howard Stern, What I've Learned, Esquire Magazine (January 2006)
“You’ve got to fight them, but you don’t try to exterminate them.”
The Paris Review interview (1994)
Context: When I see bad-looking bikers with black leather studs on their wrists hanging out at the Oregon Country Fair, I take it as a sign of health. No, I don’t want them hanging around, but trying to eliminate them all, arrest them all, legislate against them all — that’s evil. I have asked feminists, If you could, would you eliminate all male chauvinist pigs? If you could come up with some kind of spray to spray in the air and do away with them, would you? Would you do away with all scorpions and rattlesnakes, mosquitoes? Mosquitoes are part of the ecosystem. So are male chauvinist pigs. You’ve got to fight them, but you don’t try to exterminate them. A purifying group or system that would eliminate them all — that would be an evil force. Anytime you have a force that comes along and says, We will eradicate these people, you have evil. Looking back in history, what has seemed the worst turns out not to be the worst.
“Don't give up the fight,
Stand up for your rights.”
“Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!”
Get Up, Stand Up, Burnin (1973), cowritten with Peter Tosh.
Song lyrics
Source: Bob Marley - Legend
“Don’t give up,” she implored. “Get up and fight.”
The Walrus interview (2012)