Woodrow wilson quotes

Only peace between equals can last.

Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

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.

I 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Understanding is the soil in which grow all the fruits of friendship.

Every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.

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.

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.

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.

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

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action.

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

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.

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.

The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

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.

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

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

Men grow by having responsibility laid upon them.

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.

The world must be made safe for democracy.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as it exists, our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.

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.

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation—until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.

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

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

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.

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

War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.

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

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.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

...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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of life, not of mechanics; it must develop. 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.

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.

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

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.

The fewer the desires, the more peace.

I am a most unhappy man. I accidentally ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. Our government is no longer based on the freedom of opinion, nor on the conviction and the majority decision, it is now a government which is subjected to the conviction and the compulsion of a small group of dominant men.

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

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

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

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

Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life.

...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.

Responsibility is proportionate to opportunity.

America was born a Christian nation.

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.

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

The 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.

Progressiveness means not standing still when everything else is moving.

The object of love is to serve, not to win

[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.

To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

No government has ever been beneficent when the attitude of government was that it was taking care of the people. The only freedom consists in the people taking care of the government.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

The seed of revolution is repression.

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

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

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

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?

The right is more precious than peace.

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit...