Woodrow Wilson Quotes: The following quotes by Woodrow Wilson will assist you in developing a deeper understanding of your own history but will also provide you with a fresh perspective on how we currently perceive events. This book has bits of advice from America’s 28th president, who lived through the Great Influenza Pandemic, the American Civil War, and World War I.
Have Any of These Quotes Inspired You to Be the Best That You Can Be? There are a lot of obstacles in our lives. And there are times when we wonder if our difficulties will ever be over. Nevertheless, the single most important thing is to never give up and to tackle each obstacle one at a time. It may seem like they will never end, but if we just keep plugging away at them, we will eventually see the light at the end of the tunnel and achieve our goals. Throughout his life, Woodrow Wilson was burdened with responsibilities and faced challenges that the majority of us can’t even begin to fathom. He continued to fight, not only for himself but also for his country and for peace throughout the world. In the end, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his contributions to the successful conclusion of the First World War and the establishment of the League of Nations. How do the events that you are currently dealing with relate to the quotes that you have read? Have they been a source of motivation for you in any way?
1. “Tell me what is right and I will fight for it.” — Woodrow Wilson
2. “To work for the common good is the greatest creed.” — Woodrow Wilson
3. “Golf is an ineffectual attempt to put an elusive ball into an obscure hole with implements ill-adapted to the purpose.” — Woodrow Wilson
4. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
5. “The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.” — Woodrow Wilson
6. “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” — Woodrow Wilson
7. “We know that there is a standard set for us in the heavens, a standard revealed to us in this book—the Bible—which is the fixed and eternal standard by which we judge ourselves.” — Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson Quotes
8. “We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about.” — Woodrow Wilson
9. “America was born a Christian nation.” — Woodrow Wilson
10. “Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.” — Woodrow Wilson
11. “America is the only idealistic nation in the world.” — Woodrow Wilson
12. “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” — Woodrow Wilson
13. “We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.” — Woodrow Wilson
14. “The government, which was designed for the people, has gotten into the hands of the bosses and their employers—the special interests.” — Woodrow Wilson
15. “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. — Woodrow Wilson
16. “Some of us let these 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.” — Woodrow Wilson
17. “The history of liberty is the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.” — Woodrow Wilson
18. “The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.” — Woodrow Wilson
19. “Freedom exists only where people take care of the government.” — Woodrow Wilson
20. “You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known; and my love, my reverence, my admiration for you, you have increased in one evening as I should have thought only a lifetime of intimate, loving association could have increased them.” — Woodrow Wilson
21. “America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.” — Woodrow Wilson
22. “It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.” — Woodrow Wilson
23. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
24. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
25. “A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.” — Woodrow Wilson
26. “I not only use all the brains that I have, but all I can borrow.” — Woodrow Wilson
27. “That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.” — Woodrow Wilson
28. “A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do.” — Woodrow Wilson
29. “If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.” — Woodrow Wilson
30. “Thomas Jefferson was a great leader of men because he understood and interpreted the spirits of men.” — Woodrow Wilson
31. “It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” — Woodrow Wilson
32. “Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education, I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised.” — Woodrow Wilson
33. “A conservative is a man who sits and thinks—mostly sits.” — Woodrow Wilson
34. “No man can rationally live, worship, or love his neighbour on an empty stomach.” — Woodrow Wilson
35. “Many an unhappy man has been of deep service to himself and to the world.” — Woodrow Wilson
36. “Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.” — Woodrow Wilson
37. “They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” — Woodrow Wilson
38. “I never heard of any man in his senses who was fishing for a minority.” — Woodrow Wilson
39. “The history of government is a history of resistance.” — Woodrow Wilson
40. “I am not sure that it is of the first importance that you should be happy.” — Woodrow Wilson
41. “There is no higher religion than human service.” — Woodrow Wilson
42. “We are impatient with state legislatures because they seem to us less representative of the thoughtful opinion of the country than Congress is.” — Woodrow Wilson
43. “If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.” — Woodrow Wilson
44. “Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.” — Woodrow Wilson
45. “But we shall not be poor if we love liberty, because the nation that loves liberty truly sets every man free to do his best and be his best.” — Woodrow Wilson
46. “As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.” — Woodrow Wilson
47. “We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers.” — Woodrow Wilson
48. “Let us give up saying that word as if it contained a slur. If you want to win in party action, I take it for granted that you want to lure the majority to your side.” — Woodrow Wilson
49. “If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” — Woodrow Wilson
50. “In the Lord’s prayer, the first petition is for daily bread.” — Woodrow Wilson
51. “The President is at liberty, both in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can.” — Woodrow Wilson
52. “No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.” — Woodrow Wilson
53. “It does not remain fixed in any unchanging form, but grows with the growth and is altered with the change of the nation’s needs and purposes.” — Woodrow Wilson
54. “The war between the states established, at least this principle, that the Federal Government is, through its courts, the final judge of its own powers.” — Woodrow Wilson
55. “But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts.” — Woodrow Wilson
56. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
57. “It is particularly true of constitutional government that its atmosphere is opinion.” — Woodrow Wilson
58. “I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect to the past.” — Woodrow Wilson
59. “There can be no equality or opportunity if men, and women, and children are not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.” — Woodrow Wilson
60. “The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome.” — Woodrow Wilson
61. “We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.” — Woodrow Wilson
62. “We have begun a fight that it may take many a generation to complete, but you know that men are not put into this world to go the path of ease; they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.” — Woodrow Wilson
63. “I would rather lose in a cause that will someday win, than win in a cause that will someday lose!” — Woodrow Wilson
64. “We know that our legislatures do not think alike, but we are not sure that our people do not think alike.” — Woodrow Wilson
65. “The old theory of the sovereignty of the States, which used so to engage our passions, has lost its vitality.” — Woodrow Wilson
66. “Let no man suppose that progress can be divorced from religion, or that there is any other platform for the ministers of reform than the platform written in the utterances of our Lord and Savior.” — Woodrow Wilson
67. “I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive of them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.” — Woodrow Wilson
68. “We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it.” — Woodrow Wilson
69. “Caucasian laborers could not compete with the Chinese, could not live upon a handful of rice and work for a pittance, and found themselves being steadily crowded out from occupation after occupation by the thrifty, skillful Orientals, who, with their yellow skin and strange, debasing habits of life, seemed to them hardly fellow men at all, but evil spirit, rather.” — Woodrow Wilson
70. “The whole business of adaptation has been theirs, and they have undertaken it with open minds, sometimes even with boldness and a touch of audacity.” — Woodrow Wilson
71. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
72. “The seed of revolution is repression.” — Woodrow Wilson
73. “Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.” — Woodrow Wilson
74. “Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American.” — Woodrow Wilson
75. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
76. “I have found one can never get anything in life that is worthwhile without fighting for it.” — Woodrow Wilson
77. “You devour a book meant to be read, not because you would fill yourself or have an anxious care to be nourished, but because it contains such stuff.” — Woodrow Wilson
78. “An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.” — Woodrow Wilson
79. “America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal—to discover and maintain liberty among men.” — Woodrow Wilson
80. “Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill-adapted for the purpose.” — Woodrow Wilson
81. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
82. “No society is renewed from the top, and every society is renewed from the bottom.” — Woodrow Wilson
83. “The spirit of ruthless brutality will enter every fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.” — Woodrow Wilson
84. “It is easy for me as President to declare war.” — Woodrow Wilson
85. “Nothing makes America great except her acceptance of those standards of judgement which are written large upon the pages of revelation.” — Woodrow Wilson
86. “War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.” — Woodrow Wilson
87. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
88. “If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.” — Woodrow Wilson
89. “You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.” — Woodrow Wilson
90. “There must be, not a balance of power but a community power; not organized rivalries but an organized, common peace.” — Woodrow Wilson
91. “Once you lead the people into war, they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.” — Woodrow Wilson
92. “The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.” — Woodrow Wilson
93. “It is some poor farmer’s boy, or the son of some poor widow who will have to do the fighting and dying.” — Woodrow Wilson
94. “If a man is a fool, the best thing is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.” — Woodrow Wilson
95. “When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in warfare.” — Woodrow Wilson
96. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
97. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
98. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
99. “We forget, that in the resistance of the minority, some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn’t hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country.” — Woodrow Wilson
100. “Only peace between equals can last.” — Woodrow Wilson
101. “The difference between a strong man and a weak one is that the former does not give up after a defeat.” — Woodrow Wilson
102. “One cannot pay the price of self-respect.” — Woodrow Wilson
103. “Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel.” — Woodrow Wilson
104. “The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.” — Woodrow Wilson
105. “The process of the formal amendment of the constitution was made so difficult by provisions of the constitution itself that it has seldom been feasible to use it; and the difficulty of formal amendment has undoubtedly made the courts more liberal, not to say lax, in their interpretation than they would otherwise have been.” — Woodrow Wilson
106. “So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.” — Woodrow Wilson
107. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
108. “I come from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its terrible wreckage and ruin.” — Woodrow Wilson
109. “We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd.” — Woodrow Wilson
110. “What we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.” — Woodrow Wilson
111. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
112. “The immortality of Thomas Jefferson does not lie in any one of his achievements, or in the series of his achievements, but in his attitude towards mankind and the conception which he sought to realize in action of the service owed by America to the rest of the world.” — Woodrow Wilson
113. “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately.” — Woodrow Wilson
114. “One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels.” — Woodrow Wilson
115. “There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word.” — Woodrow Wilson
116. “Some people have a large circle of friends, while others have only friends that they like.” — Woodrow Wilson
117. “The chief instrumentality by which the law of the Constitution has been extended to cover the facts of national development has of course been judicial interpretation—the decisions of the courts.” — Woodrow Wilson
118. “Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.” — Woodrow Wilson
119. “You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.” — Woodrow Wilson
120. “Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life.” — Woodrow Wilson
121. “We can have no sympathy with those who seek the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions.” — Woodrow Wilson
122. “Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.” — Woodrow Wilson
123. “A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” — Woodrow Wilson
124. “All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.” — Woodrow Wilson
125. “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 forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.” — Woodrow Wilson
126. “If Germany won, it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation, and it would check his policy for a better international ethical code.” — Woodrow Wilson
127. “He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it.” — Woodrow Wilson
128. “You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride, and joy, and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write.” — Woodrow Wilson
129. “We will presently find that we are not so far apart after all, that the points on which we differ are few and the points on which we agree are many, and that if we only have the patience and the candor and the desire to get together, we will get together.” — Woodrow Wilson
130. “How is the schoolmaster, the nation, to know which boy needs the whipping?” — Woodrow Wilson
131. “You know how impossible it is, in short, to have a free nation, if it is a military nation and under military orders.” — Woodrow Wilson
132. “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.” — Woodrow Wilson
133. “Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government.” — Woodrow Wilson
134. “Property as compared with humanity, as compared with the red blood in the American people, must take second place, not first place.” — Woodrow Wilson
135. “There are blessed intervals when I forget, by one means or another, that I am President of the United States.” — Woodrow Wilson