Woodrow Wilson

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
– Woodrow Wilson

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will
ultimately fail.
– Woodrow Wilson

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
– Woodrow Wilson

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is
controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the
nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be
one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in
the civilized world. No longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by
conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a
small group of dominant men.
– Woodrow Wilson

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.
– Woodrow Wilson

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are
afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so
watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above
their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
– Woodrow Wilson

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
– Woodrow Wilson

Life does not consist in thinking, it consists in acting.
– Woodrow Wilson

Freedom exists only where the people take care of the government.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

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

I am not one of those who believe that a great standing army is the means of maintaining
peace, because if you build up a great profession, those who form parts of it want to exercise
their profession.
– Woodrow Wilson

I believe in democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
– Woodrow Wilson

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of
the government. The history of government is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is
the history of the limitation of government, not the increase of it.
– Woodrow Wilson

War isn’t declared in the name of God – it is a human affair entirely.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the
men past middle life.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

The seed of revolution is repression.
– Woodrow Wilson

We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and
not heat.
– Woodrow Wilson

We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a
spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these great dreams die,
but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the
sunshine and light which comes always to those who sincerely hope that their dreams will
come true.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

The Constitution was not made to fit us like a straitjacket. In its elasticity lies its chief
greatness.
– Woodrow Wilson

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

The person who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
– Woodrow Wilson

The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people.
Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of
sentiment, but of history.
– Woodrow Wilson