TEDDY ROOSEVELT

He is magnificent when his ears are pricked up and his tail is in the air, and he attacks a lightning express, only to be lost in the dust the express creates.
- quoted in Isabel Lyon's Journal, 1/7/1906

Mr. Roosevelt is the Tom Sawyer of the political world of the twentieth century; always showing off; always hunting for a chance to show off; in his frenzied imagination the Great Republic is a vast Barnum circus with him for a clown and the whole world for audience; he would go to Halifax for half a chance to show off and he would go to hell for a whole one.
- Mark Twain in Eruption

We are insane, each in our own way, and with insanity goes irresponsibility. Theodore the man is sane; in fairness we ought to keep in mind that Theodore, as statesman and politician, is insane and irresponsible.
- Letter to J. H. Twichell, 2/16/1905

Our people have adored this showy charlatan as perhaps no impostor of his brood has been adored since the Golden Calf, so it is to be expected that the Nation will want him back again after he is done hunting other wild animals heroically in Africa, with the safeguard and advertising equipment of a park of artillery and a brass band.
- Letter written 3/6/1908 (reprinted in The New York Times 5/31/1912)

Also see quote on William Howard Taft