Thomas Woodrow Wilson was a Democratic Party member and a well-known American statesman. From 1913 until 1921, he served as President of the United States during which he faced the difficult years of World War I. Nonetheless, he led his country with great maturity. He was responsible for a number of socioeconomic reforms, which included prohibiting child labor and giving women the right to vote.
In 1919, Wilson was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in forming the League of Nations. Outlined below is a collection of inspiring Woodrow Wilson quotes that will help you understand what it means to be a true American.
57 Thought-Provoking Woodrow Wilson Quotes
1.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
2.“The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.” – Woodrow Wilson
3.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
4.“There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.” – Woodrow Wilson
5.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
6.“I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.” – Woodrow Wilson
7.“The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.” – Woodrow Wilson
8.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
9.“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.” – Woodrow Wilson
10.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
11.“The history of liberty is a history of resistance.” – Woodrow Wilson
12.“The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.” – Woodrow Wilson
13.“If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.” – Woodrow Wilson
14.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
15.“Tell me what is right and I will fight for it.” – Woodrow Wilson
16.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
17.“One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.” – Woodrow Wilson
18.“Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.” – Woodrow Wilson
19.“Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.” – Woodrow Wilson
20.“Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.” – Woodrow Wilson
21.“The seed of revolution is repression.” – Woodrow Wilson
22.“A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.” – Woodrow Wilson
23.“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.” – Woodrow Wilson
24.“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” – Woodrow Wilson
25.“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” – Woodrow Wilson
26.“America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.” – Woodrow Wilson
27.“As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.” – Woodrow Wilson
28.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
29.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
30.“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
31.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
32.“Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.” – Woodrow Wilson
33.“I would rather lose in a cause that will someday win, than win in a cause that will someday lose.” – Woodrow Wilson
34.“America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal – to discover and maintain liberty among men.” – Woodrow Wilson
35.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
36.“So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.” – Woodrow Wilson
37.“That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.” – Woodrow Wilson
38.“Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.” – Woodrow Wilson
39.“It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.” – Woodrow Wilson
40.“If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.” – Woodrow Wilson
41.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
42.“Property as compared with humanity, as compared with the red blood in the American people, must take second place, not first place.” – Woodrow Wilson
43.“There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.” – Woodrow Wilson
44.“Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.” – Woodrow Wilson
45.“What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.” – Woodrow Wilson
46.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
47.“He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it.” – Woodrow Wilson
48.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
49.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
50.“When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.” – Woodrow Wilson
51.“I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past.” – Woodrow Wilson
52.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
53.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
54.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
55.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
56.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
57.“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.” – Woodrow Wilson
TOP 20 Woodrow Wilson Quotes
This 2-minute video takes you through 20 of the most impactful Woodrow Wilson quotes. Woodrow Wilson was the 28th president of the United States and also the author of “On Being Human.”
Summary
Woodrow Wilson had a highly intellectual personality which is evident from his sage-like quotes presented above. The teachings enveloped in these mere phrases can allow one to truly reflect upon their way of living and discern whether or not it adheres to the philosophy and purpose which the United States of America was founded upon.
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