Woodrow Wilson Quotes & Sayings

This book [the Bible] speaks both the voice of God and the voice of humanity, for there is told in it the most convincing of human experience that has ever been written ... and those who heed that story will know their strength and happiness and success are all summed up in the exhortation, "Fear God and keep His commandments." — Woodrow Wilson

We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this. — Woodrow Wilson

The truth is we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless. — Woodrow Wilson

Movies are like writing history with lightning. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. — Woodrow Wilson

Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty. — Woodrow Wilson

There is more of a nation's politics to be got out of its poetry than out of all its systematic writers on public affairs and constitutions. — Woodrow Wilson

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life ... — Woodrow Wilson

There are times when words seem empty and only actions seem great. Such a time has come, and in the Providence of God America will once more have an opportunity to show the world that she was born to save mankind. — Woodrow Wilson

Energy in a nation is like sap in a tree; it rises from bottom up. — Woodrow Wilson

Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide. — Woodrow Wilson

The world can be at peace only if the world is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. — Woodrow Wilson

Let it be your pride to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are. — Woodrow Wilson

A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

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

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. — Woodrow Wilson

Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt. — Woodrow Wilson

The man swimming against the stream knows the strenth of it. — Woodrow Wilson

I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

Liberty cannot live apart from constitutional — Woodrow Wilson

Some of us let our dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days 'till they bring them to sunshine and light. — Woodrow Wilson

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together. — Woodrow Wilson

Music says nothing to the reason: it is a kind of closely structured nonsense. — Woodrow Wilson

The flag is a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty. — Woodrow Wilson

We can have no sympathy with those who seek the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions. — Woodrow Wilson

A man's rootage is more important than his leafage. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits. — Woodrow Wilson

No man has ever risen to the stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself. — Woodrow Wilson

Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him ... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. Limits of wisdom and convenience to the public control there may be: limits of principle there are, upon strict analysis, none. — Woodrow Wilson

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

We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd; we forget that in the resistance of the minority some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn't hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country. — Woodrow Wilson

Thought cannot conceive of anything that may not be brought to expression. He who first uttered it may be only the suggester, but the doer will appear. — Woodrow Wilson

We grow by our dreams. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives. — Woodrow Wilson

Statesmen have to bend to the collective will of their peoples or be broken. — Woodrow Wilson

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 criticize 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. — Woodrow Wilson

The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief greatness. — Woodrow Wilson

The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached. — Woodrow Wilson

I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character. — Woodrow Wilson

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there 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 Wilson

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I not only use all the dreams that I have, but all that I can borrow. — Woodrow Wilson

If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it. — Woodrow Wilson

My dream is that as the years go by and the world knows more and more of America, itwill turn to America for those moral inspirations that lie at the basis of all freedomthat America will come into the full light of the day when all shall know that she puts human rights above all other rights, and that her flag is the flag not only of America but of humanity. — Woodrow Wilson

The princes among us are those who forget themselves and serve others. — Woodrow Wilson

The fewer the desires, the more peace. — Woodrow Wilson

What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind. — Woodrow Wilson

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 — Woodrow Wilson

I have sometimes heard men say politics must have nothing to do with business, and I have often wished that business had nothing to do with politics. — Woodrow Wilson

The seed of revolution is repression. — Woodrow Wilson

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow. — Woodrow Wilson

The only thing that saves the world is the little handful of disinterested men that are in it. — Woodrow Wilson

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils. — Woodrow Wilson

High society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do. — Woodrow Wilson

America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture. — Woodrow Wilson

You cannot tear up ancient rootages and safely plant the tree of liberty in soil that is not native to it. — Woodrow Wilson

No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation. — Woodrow Wilson

The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible. ["The Power of Christian Young Men", Address at the Young Men's Christian Association's Celebration, Pittsburgh, October 24, 1914] — Woodrow Wilson

Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the great people of America sometimes sounds faint and distant in that strange city. You hear politics until you wish that both parties were smothered in their own gas. — Woodrow Wilson

And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you - bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them. — Woodrow Wilson

It has become a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved inits sweeping processes of change and settlement. — Woodrow Wilson

No people are true Christians who do not think constantly of how they can lift their brother and sister, how they can assist their friends, how they can enlighten mankind, how they can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which they live. — Woodrow Wilson

The allied nations with the fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth. — Woodrow Wilson

War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you. — Woodrow Wilson

We wish companionship and renewal of spirit, enrichment of thought and the full adventure of the mind; and we desire fair company, and a larger world in which to find them. — Woodrow Wilson

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

There is something better, if possible, that a man can give than his life. That is his living spirit to a service that is not easy, to resist counsels that are hard to resist, to stand against purposes that are difficult to stand against. — Woodrow Wilson

Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto. — Woodrow Wilson

The firm basis of government is justice, not pity. — Woodrow Wilson

I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past. — Woodrow Wilson

A man is not as big as his belief in himself; he is as big as the number of persons who believe in him. — Woodrow Wilson

To think that I, the son ofthe manse, should be able to help restore the Holy Land to its people. — Woodrow Wilson

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 forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. — Woodrow Wilson

They lived long that have lived well. — Woodrow Wilson

We never found a real model (for our vision). — Woodrow Wilson

Today's greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

It would be a mistake ... to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages ... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see ... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew. — Woodrow Wilson

I have the feeling that he would rather see a good cause fail than succeed if he were not the head of it. — Woodrow Wilson

The world has a habit of going on. — Woodrow Wilson

No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. 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. Its personnel extends through all the nations, and across the seas, and into every corner of the world in the persons of the representatives of the United States in foreign
capitals and in foreign centres of commerce. — Woodrow Wilson

I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it. — Woodrow Wilson

Politics 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 Wilson

You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. — Woodrow Wilson

You must act in your friends' interests whether it pleases them or not; the object of love is to serve, not to win. — Woodrow Wilson

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

I have rather a strange objection to talking from the back platform of a train ... It changes too often. It moves around and shifts its ground too often. I like a platform that stays put. — Woodrow Wilson

While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free. — Woodrow Wilson

Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt. — Woodrow Wilson

My hope is ... that we may recover ... something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may be supposed to have started out with in the old days of the oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity. — Woodrow Wilson