IDEALS IMMIGRANTS
State Fair, Syracuse, N. Y., September 7, 1903.) Mem.
Ed. XVIII, 67; Nat. Ed. XVI, 57.
in this workday world is the possession of realizable
ideal and the sincere attempt to realize them.
For similar reasons mere closet theorizing about
the work of governing or bettering men is only rarely of
any use, and is never of as much use as a working
hypothesis that is being translated into practice. It is not
mere documentation, mere historical or philosophical
research, but experimentation, the service test, the test
by trial and error, which counts most in the ceaseless
struggle for the slow, partial, never very satisfactory,
but never-to-be-abandoned uplift of our brother man
and sister woman. (Stafford Little Lecture at Princeton
University, November 1917.) Theodore Roosevelt,
National Strength and International Duty. (Princeton,
N. J., 1917), PP. 33-34.
IDEALS AS GUIDE IN POLITICS. I certainly have
not yet found any new principle, of importance, in
public life, and so far as I have been able to get, I have
become more and more a convinced believer in the
doctrine flouted a few years ago by a then eminent
statesman, that, after all, the Decalogue and the Golden
Rule are the two guides to conduct upon which we
should base our actions in political affairs. I do not
mean to speak in a spirit of cant. I am about the last
person who would advocate holding up to any body of
men an impractical theory of life; for I steadily feel
more and more that if you make your theory impractical
you will make your practice imperfect, and that if you
set up a theory to which no man can live, you will in
practice condone a course of life on the part of your
public men which falls far short of what it is your right
and duty to insist upon. (Before Independent Club,
Buffalo, N. Y., May 15, 1899.) Mem. Ed. XVI, 482;
Nat. Ed. XIV, 322.
IDLERS. See also LEISURE; PLEASURE; WORK.
IGNORANCE. Viewed from any angle, ignorance is
the costliest crop that can be raised in any part of this
Union. (At Tuskegee Institute, Tuskegee, Ala., October
24, 1905.) Mem. Ed. XVIII, 472; Nat. Ed. XVI, 352.
IGNORANCE. See also EDUCATION.
IMMIGRANTS—AID TO. If we leave the immigrant
to be helped by representatives of foreign governments,
by foreign societies, by a press and institutions
conducted in a foreign language and in the interest of
foreign governments, and if we permit the immigrants
to exist as alien groups, each group sundered from the
rest of the citizens of the country, we shall store up for
ourselves bitter trouble in the future. (Before Knights of
Columbus, New York City, October 12, 1915.) Mem.
Ed. XX, 465; Nat. Ed. XVIII, 399.
IMMIGRANTS—ASSIMILATION OF. Where
immigrants, or the sons of immigrants, do not heartily
and in good faith throw in their lot with us, but cling to
the speech, the customs, the ways of life, and the habits
of thought of the Old World which they have left, they
thereby harm both themselves and us. If they remain
alien elements, unassimilated, and with interests
separate from ours, they are mere obstructions to the
current of our national life, and, moreover, can get no
good from it themselves. In fact, though we ourselves
also suffer from their perversity, it is they who really
suffer most. It is an immense benefit to the European
immigrant to change him into an American citizen. To
bear the name of American is to bear the most
honorable of titles; and whoever does not so believe has
no business to bear the name at all, and, if he comes
from Europe, the sooner he goes back there the better.
Besides, the man who does not become Americanized
nevertheless fails to remain a European, and becomes
nothing at all. The immigrant cannot possibly remain
what he was, or continue to be a member of the Old
World society. If he tries to retain his old language, in a
few generations it becomes a barbarous jargon; if he
tries to retain his old customs and ways of life, in a few
generations he becomes an uncouth boor. He has cut
himself off from the Old World, and cannot retain his
connection with it; and if he wishes ever to amount to
anything he must throw himself heart and soul, and
IDEALS. See also CHARACTER; DEMOCRATIC IDEAL;
HONESTY; JUSTICE ; MORAL SENSE; MORALITY; TEN
COMMANDMENTS.
IDLERS. The idler, rich or poor, is at best a useless
and is generally a noxious member of the community.
(At Labor Day Picnic, Chicago, September 3, 1900.)
Mem. Ed. XVI, 516; Nat. Ed. XIII, 487.
____________. There is no room in our healthy
American life for the mere idler, for the man or the
woman whose object it is throughout life to shirk the
duties which life ought to bring. Life can mean nothing
worth meaning, unless its prime aim is the doing of
duty, the achievement of results worth achieving. (At
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