Woodrow Wilson quotes - page 5

No doubt a lot of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle. (Woodrow Wilson)
This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
In fundamental theory socialism and democracy are almost if not quite one and the same. They both rest at bottom upon the absolute right of the community to determine its own destiny and that of its members. Men as communities are supreme over men as individuals. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
This war, in its inception was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
Of course, like every other man of intelligence and education I do believe in organic evolution. It surprises me that at this late date such questions should be raised. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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)
The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
[W]e are not bound to adhere to the doctrine held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
RADICAL-one who goes too far. CONSERVATIVE-one who does not go far enough. REACTIONARY-one who does not go at all. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
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)
We are constantly thinking of the great war ... which which we think to-day as a war which saved the Union, and it did indeed save the Union, but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before - a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics... The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
I yield to no one precedence in love for the South. But because I love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy. View quote
Woodrow Wilson
All that progressives ask or desire is permission - in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word - to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine. View quote
Woodrow Wilson