Woodrow Wilson Quotations

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

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.

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

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

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

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

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

Tell me what is right and I will fight for it.

America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

Property as compared with humanity, as compared with the red blood in the American people, must take second place, not first place.

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.

Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.

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.

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.

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

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.

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.

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

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.

My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and discuss with absolute frankness.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

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

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

The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.

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.

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.

Princeton is no longer a thing for Princeton men to please themselves with. Princeton is a thing with which Princeton men must satisfy the country.

The world is not looking for servants, there are plenty of these, but for masters, men who form their purposes and then carry them out, let the consequences be what they may.

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

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

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it.

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.

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

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

What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.

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

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.

The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.

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

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

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.

When I am travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.

Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interest of mankind to any narrow interest of their own

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.

I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you

Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness, and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible

Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people

It is easier to change the location of a cemetery, than to change the school curriculum

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.

We should not only use the brains we have, but all that we can borrow

Too much law was too much government; and too much government was too little individual privilege,- as too much individual privilege in its turn was selfish license

You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.

There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.

We cannot, we will not, choose the path of surrender

Fear God and you need not be afraid of anyone else

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

The thing to do is to supply light and not heat

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

The way to stop financial joy-riding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile

There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it it does not need to convince others by force that it is right

It must be peace without victory; only a peace between equals can last.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation

No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.

The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself

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

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

If I am to speak for ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now

The Government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German government to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities.

The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other.

Energy in a nation is like sap in a tree; it rises from bottom up.

Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.

No thoughtful man ever came to the end of his life, and had time and a little space of calm from which to look back upon it, who did not know and acknowledge that it was what he had done unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that satisfied him in the retrospect, and made him feel that he had played the man.

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

I want the people to love me, but I suppose they never will.

Government, in it's last analysis, is organized force.

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.