Woodrow Wilson Quotes

In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.

Here lies, in a "horizontal" position The "outside" case of Peter Pendulum, watch-maker. He departed this life "wound up" In hopes of being "taken in hand" by his Maker, And of being thoroughly "cleaned, repaired" and "set a-going" In the world to come.

No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

The spirit of [William] Penn will not be stayed. You cannot set limits to such knightly adventurers. After their own day is gone their spirits stalk the world, carrying inspiration everywhere that they go and reminding men of the lineage, the fine lineage, of those who have sought justice and right.

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

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.

... so far as religion is concerned, argument is adjourned.

Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.

We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.

And when they [American soldiers] came, they found fit comrades for their courage and their devotion. ... Joining hands with these, the men of America gave that greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit.

A fault which humbles a person is of more use to him or her than a good action which puffs him or her up.

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.

Character, my friends, is a byproduct. It is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand--that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe.

I came from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and terrible ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamour for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or son of some poor widow away off in some modest community, or perhaps the scion of a great family, who will have to do the fighting.

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

Every country is renewed out of the unknown ranks and not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.

The object of love is to serve, not to win

The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.

Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.

Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.

We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it.

Have you thought of the sufferings of Armenia? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered; now set your strength so that they shall never suffer again.

The right is more precious than peace.

No thoughtful man ever came to the end of his life, and had time and a little space of calm from which to look back upon it, who did not know and acknowledge that it was what he had done unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that satisfied him in the retrospect, and made him feel that he had played the man.

At last a vision has been vouchsafed to us of our life as a whole. We see the bad with the good.... With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life, without weakening or sentimentalizing it.

America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it.

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.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit...

America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness, which are derived from Holy Scripture. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask of every man and woman in this audience that, from this night on, they will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book of revelations. (The Bible) That if they would see America free and pure they will make their own spirits free and pure by the baptism of Holy Scripture.

The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own.

God knows that any man who would seek the presidency of the United States is a fool for his pains. The burden is all but intolerable, and the things that I have to do are just as much as the human spirit can carry.

The facts of the case will always have the better of [an] argument.

The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women who do the daily workis the underlying necessity of all prosperity.... There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented.

It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.

Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.

The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.

I am not one of those who believe that a great standing army is the means of maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession.

Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers.

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 against him 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.

The roll of honor consists of the names of meant who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.

A sure sign of an amateur is too much detail to compensate for too little life.

It's harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin.

I have no happy fairyland vision that she can win.

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world.

If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down.

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts