Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense Quotes

“Years earlier Roosevelt had said, “No man is above the law and no man is below it, nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“am only going to say this, that the whole trouble with the defendant in this case and the reason he has got himself in this position is due to the fact that he did not follow out the advice that was given by Cardinal Woolsey to Cromwell, ‘Cast aside ambition, by this sin fell the Angels.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“The only limitation placed upon the absolute freedom of every man is that the same freedom shall be allowed to every other man, and that no act shall be done that impairs the rights of others. This is the perfection of government.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“There are in the body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them... I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth... “...The effort to make financial or political profit out of their destruction of character can only result in public calamity. Gross and reckless assaults on character, whether on the stump or in newspaper or magazine or book, create a morbid and vicious public sentiment, and at the same time act as a profound deterrent to able men of normal sensitiveness and tend to prevent them from entering the public service at any price.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“The Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, then in the midst of his second decade on the court, once observed, “Lawyers spend a great deal of their time shoveling smoke.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“During the lunch break, he explained, he had found evidence, citing a message he’d sent to Congress in December 1906 in which he had written, “I can recommend a law prohibiting corporations from contributing to the campaign expense of any party... Let individuals contribute as they desire, but let us prohibit in effective fashion all corporations from making contributions for any political purpose directly or indirectly.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“It is not impossible that you should be guilty of misconduct beyond criticism or comment, is it?” The Colonel found a clever path. “It is not impossible that I should be guilty of conduct that would cause criticism and comment.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“already possessed it.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“At 3:45 p.m. the jurors finally began their deliberations. In the six week trial, 104 witnesses had taken the stand, 71 for Barnes, 33 for Roosevelt, and of them, 58 were former senators and assemblymen. The fully transcribed testimony, not including Judge Andrews’s charge, filled 3,738 pages. A member of Roosevelt’s defense team had even calculated that there had been a total of 934,500 words spoken in testimony—exclusive of the 252 exhibits, including letters, newspaper articles and other pieces of evidence admitted into the record. The fact that a former president would come before this jury of twelve common citizens, pictured here, created a sensation but surprised no one.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“It was Socrates who had laid down what was expected of a judge: “Four things belong to a judge: to hear courteously, to answer wisely, to consider soberly, and to decide impartially.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“Young attorney Royal France, a member of the Brooklyn Young Republican Club, then testified that Barnes had told him direct elections were not practical, “because it exposed the candidates to too much publicity; that the double campaign for the same office threw too much limelight on the candidates and that he could ruin the reputation of any man living if he threw enough limelight on it.” France had disagreed, he said, saying the kind of man who could stand any kind of limelight was the “kind of man we wanted to get into public office.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“judge sits higher than the participants to mark the fact that he is above the fray. According to legend, this tradition goes back more than one thousand years, when the British king conducted the court from his raised throne. As the court system spread throughout his realm, the king’s chosen representatives served as judges, and to signify their importance they sat higher than anyone else. In addition to its practicality—the high seat enabled the judge to view the entire courtroom—it also became symbolic of the fact that the impartial keeper of the law was not a participant in the dispute. So Judge Andrews, in his soft, steady voice, decided, “I can agree with a great many of the propositions that both sides have laid down in this argument...”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“Colonel Roosevelt had been in the witness chair for eight consecutive days; he had been questioned for thirty-eight and a half hours, as long as anyone could remember a single witness on the stand. “He had been heckled for hours at a stretch,” reported the New York Times, “and through it all he had come up smiling and happy and ready for more.” And as he stepped down from the stand, he looked at the jury, and grinned broadly. CHAPTER NINE Now that the Colonel was finished testifying he faced a new and difficult challenge: trying to sit quietly and listen, one thing at which he had never been very good, and there were no signs of improvement.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“Respect for the law was central to the concept of democracy, and there was good reason that the most imposing structure in virtually every city and town was the courthouse.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“This visit to Syracuse was for a trial, in which Teddy Roosevelt was the accused. Sued by the former head of the state Republican Party, Mr. William Barnes, for libel. The supposed offense that brought him here: while endorsing a nonpartisan candidate for governor more than a year earlier, Roosevelt had railed against two-party political boss rule, claiming Republican and Democratic political bosses had worked together to “secure the appointment to office of evil men whose activities so deeply taint and discredit our whole governmental system.” The result, he said, is a government “that is rotten throughout in almost all of its departments” and that this “invisible government...is responsible for the maladministration and corruption in the public offices” and the good citizens of the state would never “secure the economic, social and industrial reforms...until this invisible government of the party bosses working through the alliance between crooked business and crooked politics is rooted out of the government system.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“One of the most recognizable and celebrated Americans alive, the former 26th president of the United States, the hero of San Juan Hill and the daring leader of the legendary Rough Riders. The Republican progressive who as president broke the industrial trusts, regulated the railroads, set aside 230-million acres for national parks and forests and preserves, and who had fought to give the workingman “a Square Deal” through his eight years in the White House. This was T.R., the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize recipient who brokered the end of the Russo-Japanese War and who championed the seemingly impossible dream of cutting a canal through Panama to connect the mighty oceans. The historian, writer and naturalist whose death-defying adventures in the jungles of Africa and South America had captivated the country.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy

“there have been at least twenty other twentieth-century trials dubbed the “trial of the century,” all captivating based on the nature of the crimes or the identity of the defendants or victims. But only one involved a former president of the United States testifying in his own defense for over a week, and with testimony that would expose the underbelly of seedy political backdoor deal making and even profiteering. Barnes v. Roosevelt also didn’t involve just any former president taking the witness stand. Teddy Roosevelt was one of the most charismatic and entertaining presidents that the nation had, and has, ever seen.”
― Dan Abrams, Theodore Roosevelt for the Defense: The Courtroom Battle to Save His Legacy