“Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood.”

—  Theodore Roosevelt

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)
Context: Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men as nearly as they can be made, both free and equal; the freedom and equality necessarily resting on a basis of justice and brotherhood. It is not possible, with the imperfections of mankind, ever wholly to achieve such an ideal, if only for the reason that the shortcomings of men are such that complete and unrestricted individual liberty would mean the negation of even approximate equality, while a rigid and absolute equality would imply the destruction of every shred of liberty. Our business is to secure a practical working combination between the two. This combination should aim, on the one hand to secure to each man the largest measure of individual liberty that is compatible with his fellows getting from life a just share of the good things to which they are legitimately entitled; while, on the other hand, it should aim to bring about among well-behaved, hardworking people a measure of equality which shall be substantial, and which shall yet permit to the individual the personal liberty of achievement and reward without which life would not be worth living, without which all progress would stop, and civilization first stagnate and then go backwards. Such a combination cannot be completely realized. It can be realized at all only by the application of the spirit of fraternity, the spirit of brotherhood. This spirit demands that each man shall learn and apply the principle that his liberty must be used not only for his own benefit but for the interest of the community as a whole, while the community in its turn, acting as a whole, shall understand that while it must insist on its own rights as against the individual, it must also scrupulously safeguard these same rights of the individual.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Sept. 29, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Fundamentally, our chief problem may be summed up as the effort to make men as nearly as they can be made, both free an…" by Theodore Roosevelt?
Theodore Roosevelt photo
Theodore Roosevelt 445
American politician, 26th president of the United States 1858–1919

Related quotes

Mitchell Baker photo

“Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Equality is necessary for meaningful speech, and you need free speech to fight for equality. Figuring out how to stand for both at the same time can be hard.”

Mitchell Baker (1959) Chairwoman; former CEO

cnet.com: "Mozilla CEO Eich resigns after gay-marriage controversy" 3 Apr 2014 http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-eich-resigns-after-controversy/; on the resignation of Brendan Eich, 3 April 2014:

George Howard Earle, Jr. photo

“Equality of treatment is the chief purpose for which the Government exists … Liberty is but an equality of justice.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

From Hearing Before the Committee on Interstate Commerce: United States Senate Sixty-second Congress pursuant to S. Res. 98 &c. (6 December 1911:803)

Fidel Castro photo

“Marxism-Leninism is the richest doctrine in ideas of justice, freedom, equality, fraternity among men.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech (22 December 1991) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1991/esp/f221291e.html

Milton Friedman photo

“A society that puts equality—in the sense of equality of outcome—ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality.”

Milton Friedman book Free to Choose

Source: Free to Choose (1980), Ch. 5 “Created Equal”, p. 148

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo

“True consent is free consent, and full freedom of consent implies equality on the part of both parties to bargain.”

Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse (1864–1929) British sociologist

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter IV, "Laissez - Faire", p. 50.

Peter F. Drucker photo

“[J]ustification of power must be the central problem. For it is through this problem alone that freedom and equality—or... justice—can be projected into the social and political reality... But to fascism the problem does not even exist except as a ridiculous relic of "Jewish liberalism."”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Source: 1930s- 1950s, The End of Economic Man (1939), p. 15

Voltairine de Cleyre photo

“Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal.”

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866–1912) American anarchist writer and feminist

In Defense of Emma Goldman and the Right of Expropriation (1893)
Context: Humanity can not be made equal by declarations on paper. Unless the material conditions for equality exist, it is worse than mockery to pronounce men equal. And unless there is equality (and by equality I mean equal chances for every one to make the most of himself) unless, I say, these equal chances exist, freedom, either of thought, speech, or action, is equally a mockery.

Henri-Frédéric Amiel photo

“Liberty, equality — bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble becomes necessarily protection or kindness.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

Undated entry of December 1863 or early 1864, as translated by Humphry Ward (1893), p. 215
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

Barack Obama photo

“It is that spirit, that innate longing for justice and equality, for freedom and solidarity -- that’s the spirit that can light the way forward. It's in you.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)
Context: We always have the opportunity to choose our better history. We can always understand that most important decision -- the decision we make when we find our common humanity in one another. That’s always available to us, that choice. [... ] it can be heard in the confident voices of young people like you. It is that spirit, that innate longing for justice and equality, for freedom and solidarity -- that’s the spirit that can light the way forward. It's in you.

Milton Friedman photo

“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

From Created Equal, an episode of the PBS Free to Choose television series (1980, vol. 5 transcript) http://www.freetochoosemedia.org/broadcasts/freetochoose/detail_ftc1980_transcript.php?page=5.
Variant: The society that puts equality before freedom will end up with neither. The society that puts freedom before equality will end up with a great measure of both.

Related topics