Theodore Roosevelt (18581919). The Strenuous Life. 1900. VII THE
EIGHTH AND NINTH COMMANDMENTS IN POLITICS PUBLISHED IN THE
"OUTLOOK," MAY 12, 1900 THE two commandments which are specially
applicable in public life are the eighth and the ninth. Not only
every politician, high or low, but every citizen interested in
politics, and especially every man who, in a newspaper or on the
stump, advocates or condemns any public policy or any public
man, should remember always that the two cardinal points in his
doctrine ought to be, "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor." He should also, of
course, remember that the multitude of men who break the moral
law expressed in these two commandments are not to be justified
because they keep out of the clutches of the human law. Robbery
and theft, perjury and subornation of perjury, are crimes
punishable by the courts; but many a man who technically never
commits any one of these crimes is yet morally quite as guilty
as is his less