Roosevelt on How to Run a Government

Our (big) sister publication, The Atlantic, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year by reprinting excerpts from articles published in the magazine throughout its history. Here's an excerpt from a piece by Theodore Roosevelt published in 1894, when he was a 35-year-old member of the Civil Service Commission. In it, he offers some advice to the typical college graduate--who, he says, has an obligation to play a role in public life:

Let him beware of associating only with the people of his own caste and of his own little ways of political thought. Let him learn that he must deal with the mass of men; that he must go out and stand shoulder to shoulder with his friends of every rank, and face to face with his foes of every rank, and must bear himself well in the hurly-burly. ...

No man ever really learned from books how to manage a governmental system. Books are admirable adjuncts, and the statesman who has carefully studied them is far more apt to do good work than if he had not; but if he has never done anything but study books he will not be a statesman at all.