Woodrow Wilson: Trending quotes (page 5)

“Negro rule under unscrupulous adventurers had been finally put an end to in the South, and the natural, inevitable ascendancy of the whites, the responsible class, established.”

Woodrow Wilson

Division and Reunion, 1829-1889 Longmans, Green, & Company (1893) p. 273
1890s

Nature

“The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.”

Woodrow Wilson

"Princeton In The Nation's Service" (21 October 1896)
1890s

Life , World , Education , Drawing

“The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose.”

Woodrow Wilson

First Inaugural Address http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=25831 (4 March 1913)
1910s

Success

“No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.”

Woodrow Wilson

“ Citizens of Foreign Birth http://books.google.com/books?id=_VYEIml1cAkC&pg=PA87&dq=%22No+man+that+does+not+see+visions%22”, Philadelphia (10 May 1915)
1910s

Hope

“Adventurers swarmed out of the North, as much the enemies of one race as of the other, to cozen, beguile and use the negroes. The white men were aroused by a mere instinct of self-preservation — until at last there sprung into existence a great Kuklux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

Woodrow Wilson

A History of the American People (1902), describing the Klan as a brotherhood of politically disenfranchised white men; famously quoted in The Birth of a Nation (1915)
1900s

Men , Country

“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

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

Men , People , World , Justice

“The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody. God knows why they should be: it is generally shadows they are afraid of.”

Woodrow Wilson

As quoted in American Chronicle (1945) by Ray Stannard Baker, quoted on unnumbered page opposite p. 1
1920s and later

Life , Men , God , Error

“It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, 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. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that 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. God helping her, she can do no other.”

Woodrow Wilson

1910s, Address to Congress on War (1917)

God , War , People , World

“[W]e are not bound to adhere to the doctrine held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence.”

Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson, “The Author and Signers of the Declaration,” (July 1907), The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (PWW), 17:251
1900s

“It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.”

Woodrow Wilson

1880s, "The Study of Administration," 1887

“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.”

Woodrow Wilson

Letter to Mary Allen Hulbert Peck (1 August 1909), PWW 19:321
1900s

Life , Thinking

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

Woodrow Wilson

Speech to the National Press Club http://books.google.com/books?id=8gLmAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA439 (20 March 1914)
1910s

Forgetting

“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

Address in New York, 14 December 1906 http://books.google.com/books?id=Bc7iAAAAMAAJ&q=%22the+thing+that+has+ever+distinguished+America+among+the+nations+is+that+she+has+shown+that+all+men+are%22&pg=PA530#v=onepage
1900s

Men , Law

“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.”

Woodrow Wilson

Des Moines Iowa speech (1 February 1916) http://www.combat.ws/S3/BAKISSUE/CMBT01N2/SMOKE.HTM, on "The Westerm Preparedness Tour" http://www.allthingswilliam.com/presidents/wilson.html
1910s

Peace

“RADICAL—one who goes too far.
CONSERVATIVE—one who does not go far enough.
REACTIONARY—one who does not go at all.”

Woodrow Wilson

Speech to Kansas Society of New York (23 January 1911) — Wilson's definition of different groups, PWW 22:389
1910s

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

Woodrow Wilson

Remarks on The Birth of a Nation attributed to Wilson by writer Thomas Dixon, after White House screening of the film, which was based on Dixon's The Clansman. Wilson later said that he disapproved of the "unfortunate film." Wilson aide Joseph Tumulty, in a letter to the Boston branch of the NAACP in response to reports of Wilson's regard for the film wrote: The President was entirely unaware of the nature of the play before it was presented and at no time has expressed his approbation of it.
Misattributed

History

“5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.”

Woodrow Wilson

1910s, The Fourteen Points Speech (1918)

“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

“The Coming On of a New Spirit”, speech to Chicago Democrat's Iriquois Club (12 February 1912), The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, p. 180 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA180&dq=%22America+was+established+not+to+create+wealth%22
Sometimes abbreviated to: “America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal—to discover and maintain liberty among men.”
1910s

Life , Men , World , Wealth

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

Woodrow Wilson

“The Leaders of Men”, speech at the University of Tennessee (17 June 1890), in The Politics of Woodrow Wilson, p. 74 http://books.google.com/books?id=rxC4IG60KTwC&pg=PA74&dq=%22ear+of+the+leader+must+ring+with+the+voices+of+the+people%22
1890s

People

“I am inclined to follow the course suggested by a friend of mine who says that he has always followed the rule never to murder a man who is committing suicide, and clearly this misdirected gentleman is committing suicide slowly but sureley.”

Woodrow Wilson

Letter to Bernard Baruch (19 August 1916), PWW 38:51
1910s
Variant: Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.

Suicide