In speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State
which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and
distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I
wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of =the
strenuous life=--the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to
preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who
desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger,
from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid
ultimate triumph.
Theodore Roosevelt in a speech delivered before the Hamilton Club of
Chicago, April 10, 1899.