“We fear God when we do justice to and demand justice for the men within our own borders. We are false to the teachings of righteousness if we do not do such justice and demand such justice.” “Unless we are thorough going Americans and unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber of our being, we can neither serve God nor take our own part.” “Patriotism should be an integral part of our every feeling at all times, for it is merely another name for those qualities of soul which make a man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think of this duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the nation through which their and his loftiest aspirations must find their fitting expression.”
Theodore Roosevelt
1916
Fear God and Take Your Own Part is a collection of articles Theodore Roosevelt wrote, largely for Metropolitan Magazine, some six years after he left the presidency. The title is another way of saying that a nation must have the power and will for self-sacrifice as well as the power and will for self-protection. In the book, Roosevelt, who also wrote extensively on the outdoors, vigorously sets forth the "principles of true Americanism" that still reverberate throughout the nation today.