A banner says, “Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength,” with a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt, outside the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building in D.C.
A giant banner bearing the face of Theodore Roosevelt decorates the facade of the Office of Personnel Management in downtown Washington and carries an inspirational quote it attributes to the late leader. There’s one problem: Historians say the 26th president never uttered the phrase.
“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength,” says the quote, which is overlaid in serif font under Roosevelt’s portrait and attributed to him.
But scholars of the quotable Roosevelt say there’s no evidence he ever said those words, even though references linking him to it appear online.
“What I can say for certain is that the quote did not originate with Theodore Roosevelt,” Michael Patrick Cullinane, co-director and public historian of the Theodore Roosevelt Centre, said about the federal government’s poster on the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Building, which houses OPM.
