Woodrow Wilson Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit.”

“No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.”

“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...”

“So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.”

“I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, 'A free field and no favor.'”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.”

“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.”

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

“High society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do.”

“I'm a vague, conjunctured personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.”

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

“We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.”

“The soul of me is very selfish. I have gone my way after a fashion that made me the center of the plan. And you who are so individual, who are so independent a spirit, whose soul is also a kingdom, have been so loyal, so forgiving, so self-sacrificing in your willingness to live my life. Nothing but love cold have accomplished so wonderful a thing.”

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

“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.”