Woodrow Wilson

“It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.”

“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.”

“There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.”

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

“There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.”

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

“You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.”

“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.”

“I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.”

“I yield to no one precedence in love for the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy.”

“Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.”

“The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics... The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.”

“We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter's evening. Some of us let these great dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.”

“It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.”

“Administration is the most obvious part of government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself.”

“Like a lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in movement... English and American political history has been a history, not of administrative development, but of legislative oversight-not of progress in governmental organization, but of advance in law-making and political criticism... We go on criticising when we ought to be creating.”

“The principles on which to base a science of administration for America, must be principles which have democratic policy very much at heart.”

“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.”

“Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.”

“We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.”

“It has never been natural, it has seldom been possible, in this country for learning to seek a place apart and hold aloof from affairs. It is only when society is old, long settled to its ways, confident in habit, and without self-questioning upon any vital point of conduct, that study can affect seclusion and despise the passing interests of the day.”

“Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.”

“The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.”

“Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

“The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes.”

“We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act. It is true that in order to learn men must for a little while withdraw from action, must seek some quiet place of remove from the bustle of affairs, where their thoughts may run clear and tranquil, and the heats of business be for the time put off; but that cloistered refuge is no place to dream in.”

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

“There are two beings who assess character instantly by looking into the eyes,—dogs and children. If a dog not naturally possessed of the devil will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience; and if a little child, from any other reason than mere timidity, looks you in the face, and then draws back and will not come to your knee, go home and look deeper yet into your conscience.”

“The only reason I read a book is because I cannot see and converse with the man who wrote it.”

“Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.”

“The only thing that has ever distinguished America among the nations is that she has shown that all men are entitled to the benefits of the law.”

“Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.”

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

“The purpose of a university should be to make a son as unlike his father as possible. By the time a man has grown old enough to have a son in college he has specialized. The university should generalize the treatment of its undergraduates, should struggle to put them in touch with every force of life.”

“At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.”

“The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them.”

“RADICAL—one who goes too far.REACTIONARY—one who does not go at all.”

“Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.”

“America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.”

“Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.”

“Prosperity … is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.”

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

“Liberty is its own reward.”

“I would … rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than triumph in a cause that I know some day will lose.”

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

“Mr. House is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one. If I were in his place I would do just as he suggested.”

“There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with.”

“The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.”

“Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.”

“If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.”

“You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.”

“You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.”

“There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.”

“I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”

“Absolute identity with one's cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.”

“I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men.”

“Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.”

“The way to stop financial joy-riding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.”

“I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow, and I have borrowed a lot since I read it to you first.”

“There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.”

“The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name...We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.”

“You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.”

“No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.”

“There is such thing as a man being too proud to fight.”

“No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.”

“There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”

“We are constantly thinking of the great war … which which we think to-day as a war which saved the Union, and it did indeed save the Union, but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before — a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.”

“The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. It represents the experiences made by men and women, the experiences of those who do and live under that flag.”

“There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion.”

“We have stood apart, studiously neutral.”

“Do you never stop to reflect just what it is that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing peoples, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this Western World with all the fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water.”

“We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise.”

“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.”

“Some men who are not real men love other things about themselves, but the real man believes that his honor is dearer than his life; and a nation is merely all of us put together, and the nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort and the nation's peace and the nation's life itself.”

“America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.”

“There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.”

“The only excuse that America can ever have for the assertion of her physical force is that she asserts it in behalf of the interests of humanity.”

“I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans, because I am by instinct a teacher and I would like to teach them something.”

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

“Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.”

“I am inclined to follow the course suggested by a friend of mine who says that he has always followed the rule never to murder a man who is committing suicide, and clearly this misdirected gentleman is committing suicide slowly but surely.”

“There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.”

“It must be a peace without victory... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last.”

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

“Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.”

“The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together!”

“I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.”

“I have read it with the deepest appreciation of Mr. Herron's singular insight into all the elements of a complicated situation and into my own motives and purposes.”

“Well, nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.”

“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.”

“The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.”

“Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

“Conservatism is the policy of making no changes and consulting your grandmother when in doubt.”

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

“America is the place where you can not kill your Government by killing the men who conduct it. The only way you can kill government in America is by making the men and women of America forget how to govern, and nobody can do that. They sometimes find the team a little difficult to drive, but they sooner or later whip it into harness.”

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

“This war, in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.”

“I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.”

“The seed of revolution is repression.”

“In most parts of our country men work, not for themselves, not as partners in the old way in which they used to work, but generally as employees,—in a higher or lower grade,—of great corporations. There was a time when corporations played a very minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.”

“No country can afford to have its prosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury of America lies in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.”

“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

“Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.”

“All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.”

“No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.”

“So, our honest politicians and our honorable corporation heads owe it to their reputations to bring their activities out into the open.”

“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.”

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.”

“Armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.”

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”

“Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

“All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.”

“1. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at.”

“2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war.”

“5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.”

“14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.”

“What is at at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice, -- no mere peace of shreds and patches.”

“This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost.”

“After all, the test of whether it is possible for either goverament to go any further in this comparison of views is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these:”

“I have spoken thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America -- that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words but a passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandisement of any selfish interest of our own. lt springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom.”

“The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.”

“Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.”

“The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually.”

“The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody. God knows why they should be: it is generally shadows they are afraid of.”

“If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.”

“Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale.”

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

“In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.”

“Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.”

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”

“The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.”

“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.”

“We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.”

“The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.”