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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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