Woodrow Wilson - America Quotes

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We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought. America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us; and it can consist of all of us only as our spirits are banded together in a common enterprise.

Woodrow Wilson
I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able.... No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

Woodrow Wilson
America can not be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

Woodrow Wilson
To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country's service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.

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
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.

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

Woodrow Wilson
It does not become America that within her borders, where every man is free to follow the dictates of his conscience, men should raise the cry of church against church. To do that is to strike at the very spirit and heart of America.

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
I always remember that America was established not to create wealth—though any nation must create wealth which is going to make an economic foundation for its life—but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal. America has put itself under bonds to the earth to discover and maintain liberty now among men, and if she cannot see liberty now with the clear, unerring vision she had at the outset, she has lost her title, she has lost every claim to the leadership and respect of the nations of the world.

Woodrow Wilson
We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite.

Woodrow Wilson
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
Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.

Woodrow Wilson
America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it.

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.

Woodrow Wilson
The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them.

Woodrow Wilson
Do you never stop to reflect just what it is that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing peoples, and her example, her assistance, her encouragement, has thrilled two continents in this Western World with all the fine impulses which have built up human liberty on both sides of the water.

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

Woodrow Wilson
The day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

Woodrow Wilson
The only thing that has ever distinguished America among the nations is that she has shown that all men are entitled to the benefits of the law.

Woodrow Wilson
Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the great people of America sometimes sounds faint and distant in that strange city. You hear politics until you wish that both parties were smothered in their own gas.

Woodrow Wilson
I have spoken thus only that the whole world may know the true spirit of America — that men everywhere may know that our passion for justice and for self-government is no mere passion of words but a passion which, once set in action, must be satisfied. The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandisement of any selfish interest of our own. lt springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom.

Woodrow Wilson
The only excuse that America can ever have for the assertion of her physical force is that she asserts it in behalf of the interests of humanity.

Woodrow Wilson