Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was a Democratic Party political leader who served the 28th president of the United States from 1913 until 1921. He led the country into World War I, played a principal role in the ensuing peace negotiations, and led the creation of the League of Nations. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
Wilson was a renowned professor of law and political science and an inventive president of Princeton University before he launched his exceptional political career, first as governor of the state of New Jersey and then as president of the United States.
As President, Wilson carried out a series of successful administrative and fiscal reforms. His “New Freedom” policy cut trade tariffs, imposed the first federal income tax, recognized the banking system, formed the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission, increased protection for trade unions, boosted workmen’s compensation, and set restrictions on child labor.
Following the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, America preserved its neutral status. However, when the Germans reintroduced unrestricted submarine warfare, Wilson entered the war on the Allied side in April 1917. Wilson’s well-known “Fourteen Points” speech of January 1918 stressed the principles of democracy and self-determination and guided an eventual peace treaty that ended the war.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Woodrow Wilson
Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Golf
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 commands of democracy are as imperative as its privileges and opportunities are wide and generous. Its compulsion is upon us.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Responsibility
The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Survival
My father did enough of it in his lifetime to answer for both of us.
—Woodrow Wilson
No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Democracy
The nation’s honor is dearer than the nation’s comfort; yes, than the nation’s life itself.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Honor
My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
—Woodrow Wilson
They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last, only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of The Mind right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Peace
If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Character
When they the American soldiers came, they found fit comrades for their courage and their devotion…. Joining hands with them, the men of America gave the greatest of all gifts – the gift of life and the gift of spirit.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: The Military
Every country is renewed out of the unknown ranks
and not out of the ranks of those
already famous and powerful and in control.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Power
To do thinks today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Change
Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Caution
Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Luxury
All the extraordinary men I have known were extraordinary in their own estimation.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Self-Esteem, Self Respect
I am not one of those who believe that a great 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
Topics: Peace
The seed of revolution is repression.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Revolution
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.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Poverty, Realism
No task, rightly done, is truly private. It is part of the world’s work.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Work
They are not Jews in America; they are American citizens.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Jews
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
Topics: Wishes, America
When you have read the Bible, you will know it is the word of God, because you will have found it the key to your own heart, your own happiness and your own duty.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Bible, Religion
The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Economics
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
Topics: Politics, Growth
We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Unity, Miscellaneous, Togetherness
The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Politics
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: World
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Friendship, Friends, Feelings, Togetherness
Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. 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 better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Protest
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Quotations, Wisdom, Knowledge
All things come to him who waits—provided he knows what he is waiting for.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Difficulty, Patience, Life
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 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 hope that their dreams will come true.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Dreams, Growth
You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Labor, Procrastination
I feel the responsibility of the occasion? Responsibility is proportionate? to opportunity.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Responsibility
If a dog will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Conscience
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Business
A man is not as big as his belief in himself;
he is as big as the number of persons who believe in him.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Inspiration
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