Woodrow Wilson Quotes

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The object of love is to serve, not to win

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

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

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.

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

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

...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.

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

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

America was born a Christian nation.

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.

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that 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.

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.

"Genius is divine perseverance." Divine patience I believe he originally used, perseverance is better in my opinion. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.

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

...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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

[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.

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

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.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

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

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.