201 Inspiring Quotes by Woodrow Wilson

I am all kinds of a democrat, so far as I can discover but the root of the whole business is this, that I believe in the patriotism and energy and initiative of the average man.

We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.

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

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.

Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

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.

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

I am sorry for those that disagree with me because I know that they are wrong.

The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation--until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.

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.

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.

Settlements may be temporary, but the action of the nations in the interest of peace and justice must be permanent. We can set up permanent processes. We may not be able to set up permanent decisions.

I am not one of those who believe that a great standing army is the means of maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession.

Where the great force lies, there must be the sanction of peace.

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

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

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

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

People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created immediately.

Today's greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.

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.

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

Let it be your pride to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are.

Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.

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

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

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

I believe very profoundly in an over-ruling Providence, and I do not fear that any real plans can be thrown off the track. It maynot be intended that I shall be President -- but that would not break my heart.

Fear God and you need not fear anyone else.

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

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.

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

The spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into every fiber of our national life.

Conformity will be the only virtue and any man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.

Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little... We must strive for normalcy to reach stability.

A living thing is born.

Death, like the quintessence of otherness, is for others.

It would be the irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign affairs.

To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest.

While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.

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.

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

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

Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.

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

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

The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.

Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers.

To make the world safe for democracy.

A right is worth fighting for only when it can be put into operation.

The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint.

Without dependability one's ability may be a liability instead of an asset.

Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.

The seed of revolution is repression.

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.

All the extraordinary men I have ever known were chiefly extraordinary in their own estimation.

The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own.

Whatever may be said against the chewing of tobacco, this at least can be said of it, that it gives a man time to think between sentences.

Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.

We grow by our dreams.

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

No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.

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

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

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

I am so glad that I am young, so that I may give my youth to you.

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence.

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.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

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

Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever.

Thought cannot conceive of anything that may not be brought to expression. He who first uttered it may be only the suggester, but the doer will appear.

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

Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like.

The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.

Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.

Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God.

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.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

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.

A man may be defeated by his own secondary successes.

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.

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

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.

The allied nations with the fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth.

Scholarship cannot do without literature.... It needs literature to float it, to set it current, to authenticate it to all the race, to get it out of closets and into the brains of men who stir abroad.

The way to be patriotic in America is not only to love America, but to love the duty that lies nearest to our hand, and to know that in performing it we are serving our country.

If Freud had worn a kilt in the prescribed Highland manner he might have had a very different attitude to genitals.

What is at the heart of all national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions.

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life.

It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.

Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.

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.

The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.

This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own.

We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.

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

Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale.

Opinion is the great, indeed the only coordinating force in our system.

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

We can afford to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength and scorns to misuse it.

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts.

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

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

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

The natural man inevitably rebels against mathematics, a mild form of torture that could only be learned by painful processes of drill.

An evident principleis the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak.

Such a mind we must desire to see in a woman, -- a mind that stirs without irritating you, that arouses but does not belabour, amuses and yet subtly instructs.

I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, 'A free field and no favor.'

Scholarship cannot do without literature.... It needs literature to float it, to set it current, to authenticate it to all the race, to get it out of closets and into the brains of men who stir abroad.

I have the feeling that he would rather see a good cause fail than succeed if he were not the head of it.

The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open.

I confess my belief in the common man.... The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.... The man who is in the melee knows what blows are being struck and what blood is being drawn.

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.

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.

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

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.

Your enlightenment depends on the company you keep. You do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares before you were ever given your brief run upon it.

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

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.

Sciencehas won for us a great liberty in the physical world, a liberty from superstitious fear and from disease, a freedom touse nature as a familiar servant; but it has not freed us from ourselves.

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

There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.

It has become a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved inits sweeping processes of change and settlement.

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.

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.

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.

I believe in human liberty as I believe in the wine of life. There is no salvation for men in the pitiful condescension of industrial masters. Guardians have no place in a land of freemen.

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

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.

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 firmly believe in Divine Providence. Without belief in Providence I think I should go crazy. Without God the world would be a maze without a clue.

If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down.

America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture.

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.

Has justice ever grown in the soil of absolute power? Has not justice always come from the ... heart and spirit of men who resist power?

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

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.

You know how impossible it is, in short, to have a free nation if it is a military nation and under military orders.

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia.

Whate'er my doom;
It cannot be unhappy: God hath given me
The boon of resignation.

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.

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