Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilsonwas an American politician and academic who served as the 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Born in Staunton, Virginia, he spent his early years in Augusta, Georgia and Columbia, South Carolina. Wilson earned a PhD in political science at Johns Hopkins University, and served as a professor and scholar at various institutions before being chosen as President of Princeton University, a position he held from 1902 to 1910. In the election of 1910,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionUS President
Date of Birth28 December 1856
CountryUnited States of America
The masters of the government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.
The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint.
A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file.
A presidential campaign may easily degenerate into a mere personal contest, and so lose its real dignity. There is no indispensable man.
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 swelling or growing. The mischief of it is that when they swell, they do not swell enough to burst.
Americanism consists in utterly believing in the principles of America.
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.
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.
If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down.
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.
Government is not a warfare of interests.
My urgent advice to you would be, not only always to think first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellowmen. He has lost touch with the ideal of America. For America was created to unit mankind...
I'm a vague, conjunctured personality, more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.
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.'