Woodrow Wilson

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

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

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

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

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 must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

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

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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 American Revolution was a beginning not a consummation.

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

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 growing or swelling.

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.

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.

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

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.

The seed of revolution is repression.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.

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.

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.

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

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

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

If you want to make enemies try to change something.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

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

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

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.

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.

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.