"The great beauties of nature in this country... The rivers and the streams and the mountains and the hills and the valleys... These things are more valuable than diamonds and gold. I mean that. You cannot eat diamonds or gold. But the great fertile plains of this nation can feed the world if it comes to that, and it may come to that. And however much diamonds or gold may excite our desire to possess them. They cannot enlarge our ideas or elevate our ideals the way the great wonders can. They do not belong to any government, they do not belong to any corporation, they do not belong to any millionaire. They belong to you in stewardship not in ownership. We have got to take care of them and pass them on in better shape when the time comes than we have them now. And you, my friends, you are the generation of the here and the now. There is the future, your children, and their children, and their children... Tell them this for me. Love life, do your duty, god bless you."

​

~Reenactment of Man in the Arena, Theodore Roosevelt