No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.
Woodrow WilsonThe 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.
Woodrow WilsonThe use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.
Woodrow WilsonWhen I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
Woodrow WilsonIt is not men that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; men die.
Woodrow WilsonI firmly believe in Divine Providence. Without belief in Providence I think I should go crazy. Without God the world would be a maze without a clue.
Woodrow WilsonThere is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
Woodrow WilsonThe 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.
Woodrow WilsonA conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.
Woodrow WilsonWhile we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.
Woodrow WilsonWe 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.
Woodrow WilsonThe wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens . Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air.
Woodrow WilsonWhen you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know that you have come into the presence of fire - that it is best not uncautiously to touch that man - that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.
Woodrow WilsonThe history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.
Woodrow WilsonMy dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and discuss with absolute frankness.
Woodrow WilsonPolitics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.
Woodrow WilsonOur most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. . . . We must strive for normalcy to reach stability.
Woodrow WilsonI am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. . . . No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.
Woodrow WilsonJustice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.
Woodrow WilsonThe highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.
Woodrow WilsonA presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest, and so lose its real dignity. There is no indispensable man.
Woodrow WilsonWe 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.
Woodrow WilsonThe soul of me is very selfish. I have gone my way after a fashion that made me the center of the plan. And you who are so individual, who are so independent a spirit, whose soul is also a kingdom, have been so loyal, so forgiving, so self-sacrificing in your willingness to live my life. Nothing but love cold have accomplished so wonderful a thing.
Woodrow WilsonOur civilization cannot survive materially unless it is redeemed spiritually. It can be saved only by becoming permeated with the Spirit of Christ, and being made free and happy by practices which spring out of that spirit. Only thus can discontent be driven out and all shadows lifted from the road ahead.
Woodrow WilsonLoyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
Woodrow WilsonThe Constitution of the United States is not a mere lawyers' document. It is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is always the spirit of the age. Its prescriptions are clear and we know what they arebut life is always your last and most authoritative critic.
Woodrow WilsonOur object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
Woodrow WilsonA great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men who, even if their action be honest and intended for the public interest, are necessarily concentrated upon the great undertakings in which their own money is involved and who necessarily, by very reason of their own limitations, chill and check and destroy genuine economic freedom.
Woodrow WilsonRemember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this.
Woodrow Wilson