Woodrow Wilson

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

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

As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

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.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

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

I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.

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

Without dependability ones ability may be a liability instead of an asset.

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.

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.

All things come to him who waits- provided he knows what he is waiting for.

So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.

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.

The seed of revolution is repression.

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.

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.

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

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

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.

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.

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

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

At every crisis in ones life it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.

Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale.

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

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

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

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.

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.

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.

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

In the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.

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

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

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.

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.

GOLF IS A GAME IN WHICH ONE ENDEAVORS TO CONTROL A BALL WITH IMPLEMENTS ILL ADAPTED FOR THE PURPOSE.

The world is not looking for servants, there are plenty of these, but for masters, men who form their purposes and then carry them out, let the consequences be what they may.

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.

You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.

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.

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.

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

There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

If you want to make enemies try to change something.

Segregation is not humiliating but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.

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 growing or swelling.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

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

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.

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

A man may be defeated by his own secondary successes.

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

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the cousins together.

Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.

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.

Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.

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

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

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

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.

The use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.

I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past.

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

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.

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

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

The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.

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

We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.

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

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.

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

The flag is the embodiment not of sentiment but of history.

The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history.

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.

We grow by our dreams.

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.