Woodrow Wilson Quotes

280 Sourced Quotes

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 swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.

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

Woodrow Wilson
I lived a dream life (almost too exclusively, perhaps) when I was a lad and even now my thought goes back for refreshment to thosedays when all the world seemed to be a place of heroic adventure in which one's heart must keep its own counsel.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
There is no indispensable man. The government will not collapse and go to pieces if any one of the gentlemen who are seeking to be entrusted with its guidance should be left at home.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
Armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.

Woodrow Wilson
There shall be no private understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the 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.

Woodrow Wilson
The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.

Woodrow Wilson
I would … rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than triumph in a cause that I know some day will lose.

Woodrow Wilson
The Office of the President requires the constitution of an athlete, the patience of a mother, and the endurance of an early Christian.… The President is a superior kind of slave.

Woodrow Wilson
The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.

Woodrow Wilson
Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

Woodrow Wilson
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.

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

Woodrow Wilson
No country can afford to have its prosperity originated by a small controlling class. The treasury of America lies in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.

Woodrow Wilson
The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.

Woodrow Wilson
I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.

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

Woodrow Wilson
Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
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
No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.

Woodrow Wilson
The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.

Woodrow Wilson
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
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.

Woodrow Wilson
There are two beings who assess character instantly by looking into the eyes,—dogs and children. If a dog not naturally possessed of the devil will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience; and if a little child, from any other reason than mere timidity, looks you in the face, and then draws back and will not come to your knee, go home and look deeper yet into your conscience.

Woodrow Wilson
Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.

Woodrow Wilson