Woodrow Wilson - War Quotes

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Our whole strength will be put into this war of emancipation, — emancipation from the threat and attempted mastery of selfish groups of autocratic rulers, — whatever the difficulties and present partial delays. We are indomitable in our power of independent action and can in no circumstances consent to live in a world governed by intrigue and force. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development. Having set our hand to the task of achieving it, we shall not turn back.

Woodrow Wilson
This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost.

Woodrow Wilson
[The Civil War] created in this country what had never existed before—a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.

Woodrow Wilson
This war was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.

Woodrow Wilson
We are constantly thinking of the great war … which which we think today as a war which saved the Union, and it did indeed save the Union, but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before — a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.

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

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

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
Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.

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
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

Woodrow Wilson
It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their indepdence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery...and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.

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
Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.

Woodrow Wilson