Quotes by Woodrow Wilson

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose."

"The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it."

"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."

"Interest does not tie nations together it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them."

"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."

"I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past."

"The history of liberty is a history of resistance."

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."

"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."

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

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

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

"I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow."

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

"The method of political science is the interpretation of life its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions."

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

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt."

"Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that 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."