Quotes from Woodrow Wilson

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

One cool judgement is worth a dozen hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.

We have stood apart, studiously neutral.

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best.

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.

[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.

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.

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

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.

America cannot be an ostrich with its head in the sand.

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.

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

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at.2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas….5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.

14. A general association of nations must be formed… for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

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

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

It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

Right is more precious than peace.

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.

The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name…. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.

There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.

Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.

Interest does not tie nations together it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.