Top 468 Quotes & Sayings by Woodrow Wilson - Page 2

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

[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.

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

Progressiveness means not standing still when everything else is moving.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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

The object of love is to serve, not to win

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

America was born a Christian nation.

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

Responsibility is proportionate to opportunity.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

...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.

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

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 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.

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

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

Only peace between equals can last.

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

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

...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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

Men grow by having responsibility laid upon them.

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.

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.

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

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

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