William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taftserved as the 27th President of the United Statesand as the 10th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the only person to have held both offices. Taft was elected president in 1908, the chosen successor of Theodore Roosevelt, but was defeated for re-election by Woodrow Wilson in 1912 after Roosevelt split the Republican vote by running as a third-party candidate. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Taft chief justice, a position in which he served...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPresident
Date of Birth15 September 1857
CountryUnited States of America
What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our party]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.
A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people.
I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.
Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.
The admission of Oriental immigrants who cannot be amalgamated with our people has been made the subject either of prohibitory clauses in our treaties and statutes or of strict administrative regulations secured by diplomatic negotiations. I sincerely hope that we may continue to minimize the evils likely to arise from such immigration without unnecessary friction and by mutual concessions between self-respecting governments.
As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.
We shall have to begin all over again. [Taft hoped that] the Senators might change their minds, or that the people might change the Senate; instead of which they changed me.
There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.
A government is for the benefit of all the people.
Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.
No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.
We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.
Masonry aims at the promotion of morality and higher living by the cultivation of the social side of man, the rousing in him of the instincts of charity and love of his kind. It rests surely on the foundation of the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God.