Top 350 Woodrow Wilson Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “We shall not, I believe, be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting.”

— Woodrow Wilson

202. “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make.”

— Woodrow Wilson

203. “If Freud had worn a kilt in the prescribed Highland manner he might have had a very different attitude to genitals.”

— Woodrow Wilson

204. “No people are true Christians who do not think constantly of how they can lift their brother and sister, how they can assist their friends, how they can enlighten mankind, how they can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which they live.”

— Woodrow Wilson

205. “There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality.”

— Woodrow Wilson

206. “There was a time when corporations played a minor part in our business affairs, but now they play the chief part, and most men are the servants of corporations.”

— Woodrow Wilson

207. “My best training came from my father.”

— Woodrow Wilson

208. “War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.”

— Woodrow Wilson

209. “Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.”

— Woodrow Wilson

210. “Every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live.”

— Woodrow Wilson

211. “Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.”

— Woodrow Wilson

212. “America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.”

— Woodrow Wilson

213. “Some of us let our dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days ’till they bring them to sunshine and light.”

— Woodrow Wilson

214. “Your enlightenment depends on the company you keep. You do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its wares before you were ever given your brief run upon it.”

— Woodrow Wilson

215. “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

216. “It’s harder for a leader to be born in a palace than to be born in a cabin.”

— Woodrow Wilson

217. “The flag is a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty.”

— Woodrow Wilson

218. “No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.”

— Woodrow Wilson

219. “The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we but be true to ourselves.”

— Woodrow Wilson

220. “There will be no greater burden on our generation than to organize the forces of liberty in our time in order to make our quest ofa new freedom for America.”

— Woodrow Wilson

221. “We have beaten the living, but we cannot fight the dead.”

— Woodrow Wilson

222. “One cannot pay the price of self-respect.”

— Woodrow Wilson

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

— Woodrow Wilson

224. “The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.”

— Woodrow Wilson

225. “A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.”

— Woodrow Wilson

226. “The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint.”

— Woodrow Wilson

227. “If you would be a leader of men, you must lead your own generation, not the next.”

— Woodrow Wilson

228. “There is such a thing as man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.”

— Woodrow Wilson

229. “We are provincials no longer. The tragic events of the 30 months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed have made us citizens of the world. There can be no turning back.”

— Woodrow Wilson

230. “Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God.”

— Woodrow Wilson

231. “The nation’s honor is dearer than the nation’s comfort.”

— Woodrow Wilson

232. “Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.”

— Woodrow Wilson

233. “America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture.”

— Woodrow Wilson

234. “To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make a permanent conquest.”

— Woodrow Wilson

235. “You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love, my reverence, my admiration for you, you have increased in one evening as I should have thought only a lifetime of intimate, loving association could have increased them. You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression, except in some great poem which I cannot write.”

— Woodrow Wilson

236. “The greatest and truest models for all oratorsis Demosthenes. One who has not studied deeply and constantly all the great speeches of the great Athenian, is not prepared to speak in public. Only as the constant companion of Demosthenes, Burke, Fox, Canning and Webster, can we hope to become orators.”

— Woodrow Wilson

237. “Responsibility is proportionate to opportunity.”

— Woodrow Wilson

238. “The world is not looking for servants, there are plenty of these, but for masters, men who form their purposes and then carry them out, let the consequences be what they may.”

— Woodrow Wilson

239. “War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.”

— Woodrow Wilson

240. “We should not only master questions, but also act upon them, and act definitely.”

— Woodrow Wilson

241. “Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.”

— Woodrow Wilson

242. “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

243. “A fault which humbles a person is of more use to him or her than a good action which puffs him or her up.”

— Woodrow Wilson

244. “Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.”

— Woodrow Wilson

245. “The growth of our nation and all its activities are in the hands of a few men.”

— Woodrow Wilson

246. “To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest.”

— Woodrow Wilson

247. “Unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.”

— Woodrow Wilson

248. “Only peace between equals can last.”

— Woodrow Wilson

249. “Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.”

— Woodrow Wilson

250. “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.”

— Woodrow Wilson