Quotes from Woodrow Wilson

we read, if we have the true reader's zest and plate, not to grow more knowing, but to be less pent up and bound within a little circle,—as those who take their pleasure, and not as those who laboriously seek instruction,—as a means of seeing and enjoying the world of men and affairs.

We have begun a fight that it may be will take many a generation to complete...but you know that men are not put into this world to go the path of ease; they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle...We have given our lives to the enterprise, and that is richer and the moral is greater.

The world has a habit of going on.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

If a man is a fool, the best thing is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.

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.

Freedom exists only where people take care of the government.

There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.

You know how impossible it is, in short, to have a free nation if it is a military nation and under military orders

There is nothing that succeeds in life like boldness, provided you believe you are on the right side.

Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people.

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

It is ... particularly true of constitutional government that its atmosphere is opinion .... It does not remain fixed in any unchanging form, but grows with the growth and is altered with the change of the nation's needs and purposes.

no society is renewed from the top and every society is renewed from the bottom.

We can have no sympathy with those who seek the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions.

We should not only use all the brains we have but all that we can borrow.

A politician, a man engaged in party contests, must be an opportunist. Let us give up saying that word as if it contained a slur. If you want to win in party action, I take it for granted that you want to lure the majority to your side. I never heard of any man in his senses who was fishing for a minority.

I have found one can never get anything in life that is worth while without fighting for it.

There is more of a nation's politics to be got out of its poetry than out of all its systematic writers on public affairs and constitutions.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.

I would rather fail in a cause that would ultimately succeed, than succeed in a cause that would ultimately fail.

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.

You are not here merely to making 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.

No man can rationally live, worship, or love his neighbour on an empty stomach.