Top 350 Woodrow Wilson Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?”

— Woodrow Wilson

102. “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.”

— Woodrow Wilson

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

— Woodrow Wilson

104. “The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.”

— Woodrow Wilson

105. “Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.”

— Woodrow Wilson

106. “The profession I chose was politics; the profession I entered was law. I entered the one because I thought it would lead to the other.”

— Woodrow Wilson

107. “When correcting a child, the goal is to apply light, not heat.”

— Woodrow Wilson

108. “Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.”

— Woodrow Wilson

109. “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

110. “It is the object of learning, not only to satisfy the curiosity and perfect the spirits of ordinary men, but also to advance civilization.”

— Woodrow Wilson

111. “I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.”

— Woodrow Wilson

112. “No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.”

— Woodrow Wilson

113. “High society is for those who have stopped working and no longer have anything important to do.”

— Woodrow Wilson

114. “This is history written in lightning.”

— Woodrow Wilson

115. “Reality is what I see, not what you see.”

— Woodrow Wilson

116. “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

— Woodrow Wilson

117. “One of the proofs of the divinity of our gospel is the preaching it has survived.”

— Woodrow Wilson

118. “We are in the presence of a new organization of society. Our life has broken away from the past.”

— Woodrow Wilson

119. “I am all kinds of a democrat, so far as I can discover but the root of the whole business is this, that I believe in the patriotism and energy and initiative of the average man.”

— Woodrow Wilson

120. “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.”

— Woodrow Wilson

121. “It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.”

— Woodrow Wilson

122. “Genius is divine perseverance. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.”

— Woodrow Wilson

123. “The Bible is the one supreme source of revelation of the meaning of life, the nature of God and spiritual nature and need of men. It is the only guide of life which really leads the spirit in the way of peace and salvation.”

— Woodrow Wilson

124. “No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.”

— Woodrow Wilson

125. “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation – until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.”

— Woodrow Wilson

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

— Woodrow Wilson

127. “The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.”

— Woodrow Wilson

128. “Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.”

— Woodrow Wilson

129. “Remember that God ordained that I should be the next president of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal or mortals could have prevented this.”

— Woodrow Wilson

130. “Thought cannot conceive of anything that may not be brought to expression. He who first uttered it may be only the suggester, but the doer will appear.”

— Woodrow Wilson

131. “One cool judgement is worth a thousand hasty councils.”

— Woodrow Wilson

132. “In public affairs, stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because it is harder to fight.”

— Woodrow Wilson

133. “Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like.”

— Woodrow Wilson

134. “We can have no sympathy with those who seek the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambitions.”

— Woodrow Wilson

135. “The rule for every man is, not to depend on the education which other men have prepared for him-not even to consent to it; but to strive to see things as they are, and to be himself as he is. Defeat lies in self-surrender.”

— Woodrow Wilson

136. “The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.”

— Woodrow Wilson

137. “Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.”

— Woodrow Wilson

138. “A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.”

— Woodrow Wilson

139. “A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.”

— Woodrow Wilson

140. “We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world.”

— Woodrow Wilson

141. “Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.”

— Woodrow Wilson

142. “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.”

— Woodrow Wilson

143. “I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.”

— Woodrow Wilson

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

— Woodrow Wilson

145. “A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file.”

— Woodrow Wilson

146. “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.”

— Woodrow Wilson

147. “Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.”

— Woodrow Wilson

148. “No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.”

— Woodrow Wilson

149. “America is the only idealistic nation in the world.”

— Woodrow Wilson

150. “When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.”

— Woodrow Wilson