110+ Woodrow Wilson Quotes On Democracy, Education And Public Administration

Woodrow Wilson was an American politician who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a leader of the Progressive Movement, and during his presidency, he oversaw the passage of progressive legislative policies unparalleled until the New Deal in 1933. Wilson was also a key player in the development of the League of Nations, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Woodrow Wilson on democracy, education, public administration.

Top 10 Woodrow Wilson Quotes

1. I am sorry for men who do not read the Bible every day. I wonder why they deprive themselves of the strength and pleasure.
2. Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
3. We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
4. 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.
5. Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
6. If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
7. The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.
8. The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.
9. The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
10. No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.

Woodrow Wilson Short Quotes

• We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
• America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.
• America was born a Christian nation.
• If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
• The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
• The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.
• The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.
• No man can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.
• All things come to him who waits -- provided he knows what he is waiting for.
• We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers.

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Democracy

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

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy. — Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. — Woodrow Wilson

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic. — Woodrow Wilson

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

...to make the world safe for democracy. — Woodrow Wilson

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles. — Woodrow Wilson

America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it. — Woodrow Wilson

An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy — Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Education

We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks. — Woodrow Wilson

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist's trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost. — Woodrow Wilson

May it not suffice for me to say ... that 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. — Woodrow Wilson

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. — Woodrow Wilson

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

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I am not willing to be drawn further into the toils. I cannot accede to the acceptance of gifts upon terms which take the educational policy of the university out of the hands of the Trustees and Faculty and permit it to be determined by those who give money. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About League Of Nations

Any man that resists the present tides that run in the world, will find himself thrown upon a shore so high and barren that it will seem he has been separated from his human kind forever. — Woodrow Wilson

Where the great force lies, there must be the sanction of peace. — Woodrow Wilson

We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia. — Woodrow Wilson

A living thing is born. — Woodrow Wilson

Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About War

I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it. — Woodrow Wilson

We shall fight 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. — Woodrow Wilson

...I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself. — Woodrow Wilson

This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars. — Woodrow Wilson

To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life. — Woodrow Wilson

It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation. — Woodrow Wilson

The Government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German government to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities. — Woodrow Wilson

The Civil War 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. — Woodrow Wilson

There is no such thing as a 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

Is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Peace

The world can be at peace only if the world is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in rebellion, where there is not tranquility of spirit and a sense of justice, of freedom, and of right. — 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

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence. — Woodrow Wilson

There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace. — Woodrow Wilson

The right is more precious than peace. — 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

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

Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word that does not express what America ought to feel. America has a heart, and that heart throbs with all sorts of intense sympathies... We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations upon which peace can be rebuilt. — Woodrow Wilson

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. — Woodrow Wilson

No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Leadership

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed. — Woodrow Wilson

Absolute identity with one's cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership. — Woodrow Wilson

If you would be a leader of men you must lead your own generation, not the next. Your playing must be good now, while the play ison the boards and the audience in the seats.... It will not get you the repute of a good actor to have excellencies discovered in you afterwards. — Woodrow Wilson

Your real statesman is first of all, and chief of all, a great human being, with an eye for all the great fields on which men likehimself struggle, with unflagging, pathetic hope, toward better things.... He is a guide, a counselor, a mentor, a servant, a friend of mankind. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Progress

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself. — Woodrow Wilson

Progressiveness means not standing still when everything else is moving. — Woodrow Wilson

A radical is one of whom people say He goes too far. A conservative, on the other hand, is one who doesn't go far enough. Then there is the reactionary, one who doesn't go at all. All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have — Woodrow Wilson

Not all change is progress. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About World

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

You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand — Woodrow Wilson

...We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them. — Woodrow Wilson

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

[We are] 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 the duress of small groups of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

We are not here merely to make a living. We are here to enrich the world. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I firmly believe in Divine Providence. Without belief in Providence I think I should go crazy. Without God the world would be a maze without a clue. — Woodrow Wilson

We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world. — Woodrow Wilson

America is the only idealistic nation in the world. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Life

The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions. — Woodrow Wilson

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

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving. — Woodrow Wilson

Let me... remind you that it is only by working with an energy which is almost superhuman and which looks to uninterested spectators like insanity that we can accomplish anything worth the achievement. Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God. — Woodrow Wilson

The welfare, the happiness, the energy and spirit of the men and women who do the daily workis the underlying necessity of all prosperity.... There can be nothing wholesome unless their life is wholesome; there can be no contentment unless they are contented. — Woodrow Wilson

The ordinary literary man, even though he be an eminent historian, is ill-fitted to be a mentor in affairs of government. For... things are for the most part very simple in books, and in practical life very complex. — Woodrow Wilson

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life. — Woodrow Wilson

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

Work is the keystone of a perfect life. Work and trust in God. — Woodrow Wilson

This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About Politics

Never murder a man when he's busy committing suicide. — Woodrow Wilson

The cure for bad politics is the same as the cure for tuberculosis. It is living in the open. — Woodrow Wilson

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse. — Woodrow Wilson

Conservatism is the policy of make no change and consult your grandmother when in doubt. — Woodrow Wilson

Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign. — Woodrow Wilson

We ought to regard ourselves and to act as socialists--believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic. — Woodrow Wilson

The great monopoly in this country is the money monopoly. So long as it exists, our old variety of freedom and individual energy of development are out of the question. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I have sometimes heard men say politics must have nothing to do with business, and I have often wished that business had nothing to do with politics. — Woodrow Wilson

The law that will work is merely the summing up in legislative form of the moral judgment that the community has already reached. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Quotes About People

Some people have a large circle of friends while others have only friends that they like. — Woodrow Wilson

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

Never for a moment have I had one doubt about my religious beliefs. There are people who believe only so far as they can understand--that seems to me presumptuous and sets their understanding as the standard of the universe. — Woodrow Wilson

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

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world. — Woodrow Wilson

The allied nations with the fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Commonwealth. — Woodrow Wilson

In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government. — Woodrow Wilson

The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation. — Woodrow Wilson

There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of the people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity. — Woodrow Wilson

They [the children] live in a world of delightful imagination; they pursue persons and objects that never existed; they make an Argosy laden with gold out of a floating butterfly,--and these stupid [grown-up people] try to translate these things into uninteresting facts. — Woodrow Wilson

Woodrow Wilson Famous Quotes And Sayings

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

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

"Genius is divine perseverance." Divine patience I believe he originally used, perseverance is better in my opinion. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have. — Woodrow Wilson

Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions. — Woodrow Wilson

Liberty does not consist in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite action. — Woodrow Wilson

America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us. — Woodrow Wilson

America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scripture. — Woodrow Wilson

The flag of the United States has not been created by rhetorical sentences in declarations of independence and in bills of rights. It has been created by the experience of a great people, and nothing is written upon it that has not been written by their life. It is the embodiment, not of a sentiment, but of a history. — Woodrow Wilson

Government ought to be all outside and no inside. . . . Everybody knows that corruption thrives in secret places, and avoids public places, and we believe it a fair presumption that secrecy means impropriety. — Woodrow Wilson

The Americans who went to Europe to die are a unique breed.... (They) crossed the seas to a foreign land to fight for a cause which they did not pretend was peculiarly their own, which they knew was the cause of humanity and mankind. These Americans gave the greatest of all gifts, the gift of life and the gift of spirit. — Woodrow Wilson

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

A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about. — Woodrow Wilson

If Freud had worn a kilt in the prescribed Highland manner he might have had a very different attitude to genitals. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something. — Woodrow Wilson

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... — Woodrow Wilson

Fear God and you need not fear anyone else. — Woodrow Wilson

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation. — Woodrow Wilson

There is no more subtle dissolvent of morals than sentimentality. — Woodrow Wilson

Understanding is the soil in which grow all the fruits of friendship. — Woodrow Wilson

I believe that soldiers will bear me out in saying that both come in time of battle. I take it that the moral courage comes in going into the battle, and the physical courage in staying in. — Woodrow Wilson

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

Benevolence does not consist in those who are prosperous pitying and helping those who are not. It consists in fellow feeling that puts you upon actually the same level with the fellow who suffers. — Woodrow Wilson

Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street. — Woodrow Wilson

Every one at the bottom of his heart cherishes vanity; even the toad thinks himself good-looking,--"rather tawny perhaps, but look at his eye! — Woodrow Wilson

The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own. — Woodrow Wilson

When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing. — Woodrow Wilson

Wilson was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, 'That depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes, 3 days. If half hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.' — Woodrow Wilson

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

We came to America, either ourselves or in the persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of the things that divide and to make sure of the things that unite. — Woodrow Wilson

For my part, I am very much more afraid of the man who does a bad thing and does not know it is bad than of the man who does a bad thing and knows it is bad; because I think that in public affairs stupidity is more dangerous than knavery, because harder to fight and dislodge. — Woodrow Wilson

You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality. — Woodrow Wilson

No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. — Woodrow Wilson

Jefferson's Declaration of Independence is a practical document for the use of practical men. It is not a thesis for philosophers, but a whip for tyrants; it is not a theory of government but a program of action. — Woodrow Wilson

I have had the accomplishment of something like this at heart ever since I was a boy.... So I feel tonight like the man who is lodging happily in the inn which lies half way along the journey and that in time, with a fresh impulse, we shall go the rest of the journey and sleep at the journey's end like men with a quiet conscience. — Woodrow Wilson

I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it. — Woodrow Wilson

If you've made up your mind you can do something, you're absolutely RIGHT. — Woodrow Wilson

Let it be your pride to show all men everywhere not only what good soldiers you are, but also what good men you are. — Woodrow Wilson

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits. — Woodrow Wilson

Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now. — Woodrow Wilson

What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence. — Woodrow Wilson

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

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail. — Woodrow Wilson

Life Lessons by Woodrow Wilson

1. Woodrow Wilson taught the importance of taking responsibility for one's actions and decisions, no matter how difficult they may be.
2. He also showed the value of hard work and dedication, as he worked tirelessly to achieve his goals.
3. Lastly, Wilson demonstrated the power of compromise and collaboration, as he worked with both sides of the aisle to pass important legislation.