Woodrow Wilson Quotes:

...We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them.

Topics: Marine, America, Noble, United States Marine, United States Marine Corps

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

Topics: Inspiring, Dog, Silly, Man And Dog, Inspirational Dog

The world must be made safe for democracy.

source: - Speech to Congress, 2 April 1917, in 'Selected Addresses' (1918) p. 195

Topics: Democracy, World, Safe, Peace Treaties, World War 1

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

Topics: Presidential, Tragedy, Citizens, World Citizen, Citizenry

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

Topics: America, Elements, Scripture, Christian Heritage, Holy Scriptures

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson (1965). “The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson”

Topics: Leadership, Patriotic, Voice, Listening To Others, Listening Ear

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.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Ronald J. Pestritto (2005). “Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings”, p.117, Lexington Books

Topics: Government, Hands, People, Special Interests

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand

Topics: Poverty, Errands, World, Spiritual Vision, Leadership And Vision

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.

Topics: Power, Government, Historical, Political Freedom, Freedom Liberty

I am sorry for men who do not read the Bible every day. I wonder why they deprive themselves of the strength and pleasure.

Topics: Bible, Sorry, Men, Bible Reading, I Am Sorry

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.

Topics: Country, Men, Hands, Duress, Zeitgeist

Genius is divine perseverance. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.

Topics: Perseverance, Genius, Brightness

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson (2012). “The New Freedom A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People”, p.60, tredition

Topics: Strength, Perseverance, Adversity, Funny Swimming, Motivational Swimming

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.

Topics: Business, Privilege, Bigs, Exemption, Big Corporations

The seed of revolution is repression.

Topics: Revolution, Revolutionary, Repression

We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world.

Topics: Positive Thinking, Thinking, World, Spiritual Vision, Leadership And Vision

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.

Topics: Class, Tasks, Want, Liberal Education

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.

Topics: Patriotic, America

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.

Topics: Spiritual, Men, Giving, Stature, Self Giving

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

Topics: 4th Of July, Men, America

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

Topics: Grandmother, Political, Doubt, Your Grandmother

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.

Topics: Twilight, Experience, Noon

I come from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its terrible wreckage and 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 clamor for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or the son of some poor widow - who will have to do the fighting and dying.

Topics: War, Son, Fighting

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.

Topics: Yesterday, Trying, Today, Where We Came

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

Topics: Inspirational, Life, Motivational, Inspiring Presidential, 4 Hour Work Week

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

Topics: Leadership, Sports, Spiritual, Community Service, Common Good

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

Topics: Inspirational, Patriotic, Light, Personal Feelings, Personal Interest

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.

Topics: Children, Opportunity, Equality, Social Equality, Equality Of Man

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.

Topics: Leadership, Doe, Compromise, True Leader, Inspiring Leader

Life does not consist in thinking, it consists in acting.

Topics: Thinking, Acting, Doe

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.

Topics: Patriotic, Men, Hands

The Americans who went to Europe to die are a unique breed.... (They) crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause which they did not pretend was peculiarly their own, which they knew was the cause of humanity and mankind. These Americans gave the greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit.

Topics: Fighting, Unique, Europe, Foreign Lands, Gifts Of Life

We should not only master questions, but also act upon them, and act definitely.

Topics: Should, Masters

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.

Topics: Selfish, Sacrifice, Political

The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history...

Topics: Rights, People, Independence, Flag Day

The sum of the whole matter is this - our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually.

Topics: Civilization, Survival, Matter, Redeemed

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

Topics: Liberty, Resistance

I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1988). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

Topics: 4th Of July, Men, Safety, Funny 4th Of July, Funny Political

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

Topics: Strong, Giving Up, Men

The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.

Topics: Men, Understanding, Democracy

The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

Topics: People, Patriotism, Flags, American Patriot, American Patriotic

All things come to him who waits - provided he knows what he is waiting for.

Topics: Patience, Waiting, Life Patience, Patience And Waiting, Great Patience

The way to stop financial joyriding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.

Topics: Money, Way, Financial, Wise Money, Chauffeurs

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

Topics: Book, Men, Half, Inspiring Book, Inspiring Reading

No man can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

Topics: Men, Poverty, Worship, Our Daily Bread, Daily Bread

When I think of the flag.... I see alternate strips of parchment upon which are written the rights of liberty and justice, and stripes of blood to vindicate those rights, and then, in the corner, a prediction of the blue serene into which every nation may swim which stands for these great things.

Topics: Thinking, Rights, Blue, Flag Day

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.

Topics: Heart, Men, Names, Hyphens, Great Patriotic

We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Mario R. DiNunzio (2006). “Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president”, p.127, NYU Press

Topics: World, This World, Stills

We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

Topics: Together, Purpose, Ends, Togetherness, Goals And Objectives

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Ronald J. Pestritto (2005). “Woodrow Wilson: The Essential Political Writings”, p.109, Lexington Books

Topics: Heartless, Truth Is, Economic, Economic Systems

Let me... remind you that it is only by working with an energy which is almost superhuman and which looks to uninterested spectators like insanity that we can accomplish anything worth the achievement. Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God.

Topics: Perfect, Discipline, Achievement, Perfect Life, Uninterested

When correcting a child, the goal is to apply light, not heat.

Topics: Children, Light, Goal, Correcting

Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life.

Topics: Ignorance, Responsibility, Fundamentals

Fear God and you need not fear anyone else.

Topics: God, Needs, Fear God

May it not suffice for me to say ... that 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.

Topics: Believe, Men, Presidential, Intelligence And Education

When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

Topics: Men, Sacred, Warfare

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.

Topics: Success, Judgement, Council

There is a power so organized, so subtle, so complete, and so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

Topics: Speak, Conspiracy, Condemnation

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

Topics: Loyalty, Mean, Heart, Self Sacrifice

Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety.

Topics: Believe, Mean, Government, Corrupt Government, Secret Places

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

Topics: Doe, Students, Subjects

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.

Topics: Military, Believe, Democracy

Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?

Topics: Children, War, Men

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

Topics: Military, Pride, Men, Good Soldiers

A 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.

Topics: Men, Hands, Growth

To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.

Topics: Country, Gratitude, Pride, Christian Veterans Day, Veteran's Day

Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, 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 better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.

source: - "The New Freedom : A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People" by Woodrow Wilson, (p. 13), 1913.

Topics: Fear, Men, Views, Power And Control, State Government

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

Topics: Friendship, Patience, Real Friends, Meaningful Friendship, Inspirational Friendship

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

Topics: Grandmother, Political, Doubt, My Grandmother, Being A Grandmother

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.

Topics: Adversity, Men, Bravery, Brave Man

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

Topics: Men, Thinking, Political, Conservative Political, Anti Conservative

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

Topics: Inspirational, Leadership, Successful, Absolute Freedom

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

Topics: Respect, Party, Past

I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.

Topics: Inspirational, Motivational, Patriotic

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.

Topics: Cancer, Patriotic, Thinking, Misgivings

When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.

Topics: Work, Men, Office, Swelling

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.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.15, The Minerva Group, Inc.

Topics: Life, Motivational, Inspiring, Spiritual Vision, Leadership And Vision

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.135, The Minerva Group, Inc.

Topics: Change, Clever, Christian Inspirational, Managing Change, Inspirational Presidential

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

Topics: Country, Men, Usa, Naval

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 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.

Topics: Love, Dream, Spring, Man Of My Dreams, Dreams Can Come True

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

Topics: Teamwork, Power, Purpose

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers.

Topics: Inspirational, Sports, Dream

We grow by our dreams.

Topics: Dream, Grows

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

Topics: 4th Of July, Revolution, American Revolution, Independence Day Patriotic, 4th Of July Inspirational

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

Topics: 4th Of July, Patriotic, America, Idealistic, American Patriot

Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

Topics: Character, Great Men, Duty

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.

Topics: Running, Country, Stars

Every great man of business has got somewhere a touch of the idealist in him.

Topics: Business, Men, Idealist

Today's greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

Topics: Today, Saving, Tomorrow

Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God.

Topics: Work, Perfect, Trust In God

If Freud had worn a kilt in the prescribed Highland manner he might have had a very different attitude to genitals.

Topics: Attitude, Might, Different, Different Attitude, Kilts

Death comes along like a gas bill one can't payand that's all one can sayabout it.

Topics: Bills, Gas

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

Topics: Kind, Nonsense, Reason

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.

Topics: War, Generations, World, Another World, World War I

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.

Topics: Country, Regret, Patriotic

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

Topics: Too Much, Details, Littles

If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing; if you lose your health, you have lost something; but if you lose your character, you have lost everything.

Topics: Character, Healthy, Wealth

Reality is what I see, not what you see.

Topics: Reality

The natural man inevitably rebels against mathematics, a mild form of torture that could only be learned by painful processes of drill.

Topics: Men, Rebel, Painful

...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.

Topics: Mistake, Eye, Men

As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.

Topics: Power, Facts, Matter, Matter Of Fact

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

Topics: Spiritual, Character, Thinking, American Character

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.

Topics: Heart, Men, Excellence

It must be a peace without victory

Topics: Victory, Duress, Quicksand, Victor's

I want to re-echo my hope that we may all work together for a great peace as distinguished from a mean peace.

Topics: Mean, Echoes, Together

What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction.

Topics: Party, Voting, Use

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

Topics: Lying, Greatness, Constitution, Elasticity

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.

Topics: Peace, Believe, Mean, Maintaining Peace

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

Topics: Luxury, Political, Recluse, Uncompromising, Sweet Dreams

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.

Topics: Doors, Order, Flags, Outraged, Financiers

Remember 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.

Topics: President, Next, United States

Every one at the bottom of his heart cherishes vanity; even the toad thinks himself good-looking,--"rather tawny perhaps, but look at his eye!

Topics: Heart, Eye, Thinking

...to make the world safe for democracy.

Topics: Historical, Democracy, Safe, Anthropology, Peaceful Coexistence

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

Topics: Blessed, Mean, Political, Intervals

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.

Topics: Christian, Lying, Book, Book Of Revelation, Christian Heritage

I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience.

Topics: Lying, Ambition, Sleep

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

Topics: Broken, Collectives, Statesmanship

Unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.

Topics: Justice, Done

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.

Topics: Country, Powerful, Lying

We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

Topics: Fighting, Safety, World, Declaration Of War, Small Nations

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

Topics: Using Words, Sound, Novelists

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

Topics: Fate, Administration, Would Be, Foreign Affairs

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.

Topics: Lying, Taken, Hands

America was born a Christian nation,

Topics: Christian, America, Born

Death, like the quintessence of otherness, is for others.

Topics: Quintessence, Otherness

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit

Topics: Benefits, Segregation, Humiliating

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country,

Topics: Country, Men, Unhappy

The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we but be true to ourselves.

Topics: Lying, Dark, Light

That is Gladstone, the greatest statesman that ever lived. I intend to be a statesman, too.

Topics: Ambition, Gladstone

The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.

Topics: Oratory, Speech, Foxes, Canning, Great Speech

The legislator must be in advance of his age. Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.

Topics: Sight, Mind, Age, Anon, Future Events

I must beg you to indulge me in the matter of hyphens.... You will find that I have marked out a great many in the proofs. We arein danger of Germanizing our printing by using them so much, and I have a very decided preference in the matter.

Topics: Style, Matter, Great Men, Hyphens

There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to and that is the truth of justice, and of liberty, and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to led by itand through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.

Topics: Peace, Truth, Hands

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.

Topics: Faith, Religious, Believe, Presumptuous

If young gentlemen get from their years in college only manliness, esprit de corps, a release of their social gifts, a training ingive and take, a catholic taste in men and the standards of true sportsmen, they have gained much but they have not gained what a college should give them. It should give them insight into the things of the mind and the spiritthe consciousness of having taken on them the vows of true enlightenment and of having undergone the discipline, never to be shaken off, of those who seek wisdom in candor, with faithful labor and travail of spirit.

Topics: Taken, College, Men, Esprit De Corps, Young Gentlemen

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.

Topics: War, Race, People, Process Of Change

The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of thecivilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.

Topics: War, Flames, Years

The light that shined upon the summit now seems almost to shine at our feet.

Topics: Peace, Feet, Light

Where the great force lies, there must be the sanction of peace.

Topics: Peace, Lying, League, Collective Security, League Of Nations

There is a very holy and a very terrible isolation for the conscience of every man who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist.

Topics: Lonely, Loneliness, Destiny

I am not one of those who have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction, as will come upon these again, utter destruction and contempt. That we shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.

Topics: Anxiety, Reign, Fool

It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.

Topics: Learning, Men, Civilization

There will be no greater burden on our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time in order to make our quest ofa new freedom for America.

Topics: Freedom, Order, America

The competent leader of men cares little for the niceties of other peoples' characters: he cares much--everything--for the exterior uses to which they may be put.... These are men to be moved. How should he move them? He supplies the power; others simply the materials on which that power operates.

Topics: Moving, Character, Men, Supplies, Niceties

Today, supremely, it behooves us to remember that a nation shall be saved by the power that sleeps in its own bosom; or by none; shall be renewed in hope, in confidence, in strength by waters welling up from its own sweet, perennial springs. Not from above; not by patronage of its aristocrats. The flower does not bear the root, but the root the flower.

Topics: Sweet, Freedom, Spring, Patronage

They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,--and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts.

Topics: Children, Stupid, Butterfly

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.

Topics: Men, Energy, Spirit

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For... things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.

Topics: Book, Simple, Men, Practical Life

Sciencehas won for us a great liberty in the physical world, a liberty from superstitious fear and from disease, a freedom touse nature as a familiar servant; but it has not freed us from ourselves.

Topics: Science, Liberty, World

Scholarship cannot do without literature.... It needs literature to float it, to set it current, to authenticate it to all the race, to get it out of closets and into the brains of men who stir abroad.

Topics: Men, Race, Brain, Floats

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic.

Topics: Government, Body, Socialism, Beneficence, Wholesomeness

A man may be defeated by his own secondary successes.

Topics: Success, Men, May

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

Topics: War, Heart, Fighting, Declaration Of War, Small Nations

They lived long that have lived well.

Topics: Long, Wells

The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

Topics: Patriotism, Embodiment, Flags

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.

Topics: Peace, Justice, World

If you would be a leader of men you must lead your own generation, not the next. Your playing must be good now, while the play ison the boards and the audience in the seats.... It will not get you the repute of a good actor to have excellencies discovered in you afterwards.

Topics: Leadership, Men, Play

I am so glad that I am young, so that I may give my youth to you.

Topics: Giving, May, Youth, Youthfulness

Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever.

Topics: Running, Men, League, League Of Nations

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia.

Topics: Europe, League, World, League Of Nations

A living thing is born.

Topics: League, League Of Nations, Born

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.

Topics: Moving, Talking, Strange

This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own....

Topics: College, World, Littles, Small World, College Life

Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you can find older men who will give you countenance and acceptableleadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with them. There are only two sorts of men to be associated with when something is to be done: Those are young men and men who never grow old.

Topics: Men, Organization, Two, Older Man

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

Topics: Men, President, Pay

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.

Topics: Book, Reading, Men, Reading Books

The fewer the desires, the more peace.

Topics: Desire

Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the ... heart and spirit of men who resist power?

Topics: Heart, Men, Justice

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

Topics: Character, Lawyer, Used

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.

Topics: Suffering, Armenia, Helping, Armenian Genocide, Armenians

The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need.

Topics: Men, Luxury, Essentials

The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand, and to know that in performing it we are serving our country.

Topics: Country, Lying, Patriotic

An evident principleis the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Topics: Strong, Equality, Justice

Bagehot did what so many thousand of young graduates before him had done,--he studied for the bar; and then, having prepared himself to practise law, followed another large body of young men in deciding to abandon it.

Topics: Men, Law, Done

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.

Topics: Leadership, Blow, Men

Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men likehimself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind.

Topics: Leadership, Real, Struggle, Statesmanship

The 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.

Topics: Age, United States, Lasts, Constitution Of The United States, Prescriptions

My best training came from my father.

Topics: Dad, Father, Training

Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like.

Topics: Circles, People, Circle Of Friends

You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love, my reverence, my admiration for you, you have increased in one evening as I should have thought only a lifetime of intimate, loving association could have increased them. You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write.

Topics: Gratitude, Writing, Heart, Joy And Gratitude

Only peace between equals can last.

Topics: Lasts

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

Topics: Heart, Fighting

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Howard Seavoy Leach (1970). “The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson: Authorized Ed”

Topics: Government, Democracy, Principles, Forms Of Government

A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.86, The Minerva Group, Inc.

Topics: Stars, Son, Men

I am sorry for those that disagree with me because I know that they are wrong.

Topics: Funny, Sorry, Knows, Am Sorry

...I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Mario R. DiNunzio (2006). “Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president”, p.359, NYU Press

Topics: War, Men, Hands, Take Care Of Me

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Mario R. DiNunzio (2006). “Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president”, p.355, NYU Press

Topics: Believe, Greatness, Men

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.

source: - "The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson".

Topics: Power, Government, Historical

We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1974). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

Topics: Confused, Thoughtful, Voice, Bewildered

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.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.20, The Minerva Group, Inc.

Topics: Love, President, Liberty, Poor Nations, Nigeria Independence

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

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1981). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

Topics: Forget

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.

Topics: Christian, Brother, Thinking

We must believe the things We teach our children

Topics: Children, Believe, Teach

My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellowmen. He has lost touch with the ideal of America. For America was created to unit mankind.

Topics: Sorry, Passion, Jealous, Am Sorry

Never murder a man when he's busy committing suicide.

Topics: Suicide, Men, Politics, Committing Suicide

[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men.

source: - Woodrow Wilson (2012). “The New Freedom A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People”, p.136, tredition

Topics: Men, Nwo, Free Opinion, Duress, State Government

The object of love is to serve, not to win

source: - Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson: Extracts from the Public Speeches of the Leader and Interpreter of American Democracy, with Masterpieces of Eloquence”, Best Books

Topics: Love, Valentines Day, Flower

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1976). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

Topics: Kings, Cynical, Democracy

To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.

source: - Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bushnell Hart (2002). “Selected Addresses and Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, p.288, The Minerva Group, Inc.

Topics: Conquer The World, Arms, Earning

If you've made up your mind you can do something, you're absolutely RIGHT.

Topics: Mind, Made, Can Do Something