Woodrow Wilson

Quotes

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.
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.
When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.
Never murder a man when he's busy committing suicide.
If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in face, you should go home and examine your consicence.
The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
I can imagine no greater disservice to the county than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.
The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
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.
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.
America is not a mere body of traders; it is a body of free men. Our greatness-built upon freedom-is moral, not material. we have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgement that the community has already reached.
A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
...it is as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.
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.
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing is to supply light and not heat.
There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.
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.
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.
When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness, and your own duty.
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.
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....
The world must be made safe for democracy.
I'd rather lose a cause that will one day win than win a cause that will some day lose.
No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.
Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.
There is such a thing as a 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 world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
Here is a great body of our Jewish citizens from whom have sprung men of genius in every walk of our varied life; men who have conceived of its ideals with singular clearness; and led enterprises with sprit & sagacity... They are not Jews in America, they are American citizens.
Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history of limitation of government power, not the increase of it.
Our industries have expanded to such a point that they will burst their jackets if they cannot find a free outlet to the markets of the world. Our domestic markets no longer suffice. We need foreign markets.
Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blue prints of your ultimate achievements.
Never murder a man who is committing suicide.
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.
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.