Who really said it

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life

Q: Did Theodore Roosevelt say "The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life"?

Yes. Genuine, and unusually well cited for a Roosevelt line. He wrote it to S. Stanwood Menken, head of the National Security League, on 10 January 1917. The letter was read aloud in Washington on 26 January 1917 to the League's Congress of Constructive Patriotism and printed in the Proceedings of that congress at page 172. Roosevelt was out of office, out of favour and campaigning hard for American entry into the war the citation.

Verified — a letter of 10 January 1917 Theodore Roosevelt 1858–1919 · 26th President of the United States

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Genuine, and unusually well cited for a Roosevelt line. He wrote it to S. Stanwood Menken, head of the National Security League, on 10 January 1917. The letter was read aloud in Washington on 26 January 1917 to the League’s Congress of Constructive Patriotism and printed in the Proceedings of that congress at page 172. Roosevelt was out of office, out of favour and campaigning hard for American entry into the war the citation ↗.

Last verified 21 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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“The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life” —Theodore Roosevelt, letter to S. Stanwood Menken, 10 January 1917.

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In context

Evoking the world of Theodore Roosevelt — 26th President of the United States. Theme: "The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

The source

Document: Letter to S. Stanwood Menken
Dated: 10 January 1917
Read aloud: Washington, D.C., 26 January 1917
Printed in: Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism (New York, 1917), p. 172

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life. Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, 10 January 1917

Note the hyphens. Roosevelt is not listing four vices; he is naming four slogans — ‘prosperity-at-any-price’, ‘peace-at-any-price’, ‘safety-first’ — and hyphenating them to mark them as somebody else’s catchphrases. ‘Safety first’ was a real and hugely successful industrial-safety campaign at the time, which is why he could expect the jab to land.

Theodore Roosevelt Association quotation index — with full citation

How we traced it

The Theodore Roosevelt Association’s quotation index — the standard sourced reference for his words — files it under ‘Americanism’ with a full citation: to S. S. Menken, 10 January 1917; read before the National Security League, Washington, 26 January 1917; Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism (New York, 1917), p. 172 the index entry ↗.
The recipient checks out. S. Stanwood Menken was a New York lawyer who founded the National Security League in 1914 and chaired the committee running the January 1917 congress — a preparedness rally held in Washington on 25–27 January, weeks before America entered the war.
The letter itself survives: the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s digital library holds a record for a Roosevelt letter to Menken of this date. Two honest caveats — we verified the wording and the page number through the Association’s sourced index rather than by opening the 1917 Proceedings ourselves, and the reading in Washington was done on Roosevelt’s behalf, not by him the archive record ↗.

Public domain

Public domain in the United States. The letter was published in 1917, well before the 1929 cut-off, so no US copyright subsists; Roosevelt died in 1919, which also clears the UK and EU life-plus-70 terms. Quote it freely with attribution. This is not legal advice.

Fact-check

What to watch for

The attribution is sound and the citation is specific. The problems are cosmetic — and one of them changes the joke.

Usually stripped out minor drift

Almost every reprint gives ‘prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first’ without hyphens. The sourced text hyphenates them, because Roosevelt is quoting slogans back at the people who used them. Lose the hyphens and you lose the sneer.

Half the sentence clipped

It circulates cut off after ‘duty-first’, or with ‘peace-at-any-price’ quietly dropped — which is convenient, since that clause is the one that dates it to a specific argument about entering the First World War.

Two dates, both real confusion

You will see it dated 10 January 1917 and 26 January 1917. Both are right: the first is when Roosevelt wrote the letter, the second is when it was read aloud at the Washington congress that printed it.

A war-preparedness letter context

It gets quoted as timeless moral commentary on soft modern living. It was written to the head of the National Security League as an argument for universal military service and American entry into the war — ‘safety first’ meant staying out of it.

Genuinely Roosevelt — a letter of 10 January 1917 to S. Stanwood Menken, read in Washington on 26 January and printed in the congress Proceedings, p. 172 the sourced citation ↗.

Context

Why it resonates

Every generation hears it as a description of itself, which is the whole trick: four abstractions, no dates, no names, and a diagnosis that fits whatever the listener already suspects has gone soft.

The 1917 setting is sharper than that. Roosevelt had spent two years attacking President Wilson for keeping America out of the war, and had been refused a command of his own. ‘Peace-at-any-price’ was not a mood he disapproved of; it was the other side’s campaign position.

'Safety first' was not a mood he disapproved of. In January 1917 it was the other side's campaign position.

January 1917, in order

10 January 1917: Roosevelt writes to S. Stanwood Menken, chairman of the committee running the Congress of Constructive Patriotism.

25–27 January 1917: the National Security League holds that congress in Washington, D.C., pressing for preparedness and universal service.

26 January 1917: the letter is read aloud to the meeting on Roosevelt’s behalf.

It is printed in the congress Proceedings later that year, at page 172 — which is why the citation is so precise.

6 April 1917: the United States declares war. Roosevelt asks to raise a volunteer division and is refused.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Character Purpose

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Theodore Roosevelt Association — quotation indextheodoreroosevelt.org

The standard sourced index, giving recipient, both dates and the page in the 1917 Proceedings.

Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to S. Stanwood Menkentheodorerooseveltcenter.org

The digital-library record for the letter itself in the Theodore Roosevelt Center’s collection.

‘Great Ideas of Western Man’ print carrying the quotationamericanart.si.edu

How the line entered mid-century American public culture — as a Container Corporation advertisement, now in the Smithsonian.

S. Stanwood Menkenen.wikipedia.org

Background on the recipient and the National Security League he founded in 1914.

The true author

About Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

1858–1919 · 26th President of the United States

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) was president from 1901 to 1909 and, by 1917, a private citizen with no office and enormous voice — writing letters, columns and speeches pushing a reluctant country towards war. He is one of the most misquoted Americans there is, partly because he wrote so much that almost any strenuous-sounding sentence seems plausible. That makes the properly sourced items worth holding on to: this one has a recipient, two dates and a page number.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Roosevelt, Theodore. Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, 10 January 1917; read before the National Security League, Washington, D.C., 26 January 1917. Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism (New York, 1917), p. 172.

MLA (9th ed.)

Roosevelt, Theodore. Letter to S. Stanwood Menken. 10 Jan. 1917. Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, 1917, p. 172.

APA (7th ed.)

Roosevelt, T. (1917, January 10). Letter to S. Stanwood Menken. In Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism (p. 172).

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The things that will destroy America’?” Last verified 21 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-things-that-will-destroy-america-are-prosperity