Woodrow Wilson Quotes

280 Sourced Quotes

Tolerance is an admirable intellectual gift; but it is of little worth in politics.

Woodrow Wilson
To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air.

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.

Woodrow Wilson
The legislator must be in advance of his age.
Across the mind of the statesman flash ever and anon the brilliant, though partial, intimations of future events.... Something which is more than fore-sight and less than prophetic knowledge marks the statesman a peculiar being among his contemporaries.

Woodrow Wilson
My hope is... that we may recover... something of a renewal of that vision of the law with which men may be supposed to have started out with in the old days of the oracles, who communed with the intimations of divinity.

Woodrow Wilson
Have you thought of the sufferings of Armenia? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered; now set your strength so that they shall never suffer again.

Woodrow Wilson
A radical is one of whom people say ''He goes too far.'' A conservative, on the other hand, is one who ''doesn't go far enough.'' Then there is the reactionary, ''one who doesn't go at all.'' All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a practical document for the use of practical men. It is not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; it is not a theory of government but a program of action.

Woodrow Wilson
Excesses accomplish nothing. Disorder immediately defeats itself.

Woodrow Wilson
Great statesmen seem to direct and rule by a sort of power to put themselves in the place of the nation over which they are set, and may thus be said to possess the souls of poets at the same time they display the coarser sense and the more vulgar sagacity of practical men of business.

Woodrow Wilson
The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For...

things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex.

Woodrow Wilson
Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you can find older men who will give you countenance and acceptableleadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with them. There are only two sorts of men to be associated with when something is to be done: Those are young men and men who never grow old.

Woodrow Wilson
I do not want to live under a philanthropy. I do not want to be taken care of by the government.... We do not want a benevolent government. We want a free and a just government.

Woodrow Wilson
When the representatives of "Big Business" think of the people, they do not include themselves.

Woodrow Wilson
Energy in a nation is like sap in a tree; it rises from bottom up.

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

Woodrow Wilson
There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to and that is the truth of justice, and of liberty, and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to led by itand through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached.

Woodrow Wilson
The facts of the case will always have the better of [an] argument.

Woodrow Wilson
I am not willing to be drawn further into the toils. I cannot accede to the acceptance of gifts upon terms which take the educational policy of the university out of the hands of the Trustees and Faculty and permit it to be determined by those who give money.

Woodrow Wilson
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.

Woodrow Wilson
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?

Woodrow Wilson
When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

Woodrow Wilson
The greatest embarrassment of my political career has been that active duties seem to deprive me of time for careful investigation. I seem almost obliged to form conclusions from impressions instead of from study.... I wish that I had more knowledge, more thorough acquaintance, with the matters involved.

Woodrow Wilson
America is not a mere body of traders; it is a body of free men. Our greatness is built upon our freedom - is moral, not material. We have a great ardor for gain; but we have a deep passion for the rights of man.

Woodrow Wilson
If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.

Woodrow Wilson