Quotes By Woodrow Wilson

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

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

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.

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.

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

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.

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

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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