Woodrow Wilson Quotes

“This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.”

“One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.”

“The world must be made safe for democracy.”

“The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.”

“The right is more precious than peace.”

“There is such a thing as man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”

“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.”

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

“A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.”

“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.”

“I lived a dream life (almost too exclusively, perhaps) when I was a lad and even now my thought goes back for refreshment to thosedays when all the world seemed to be a place of heroic adventure in which one's heart must keep its own counsel.”

“I am not sure that it is of the first importance that you should be happy. Many an unhappy man has been of deep service to himself and to the world.”

“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.”

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

“...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.”

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

“Liberty is its own reward.”

“The commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us.”

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

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

“We didn't have another choice but to do what we did, if we wanted to be accepted, because we weren't counted as human beings.”

“If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.”

“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.”

“Not all change is progress.”

“There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to suceed and be great. Our thought has been 'Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,' while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves.”