Quotes from William Howard Taft

I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am president the less of a party man I seem to become.

Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law.

No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.

No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.

I don't know whither we are drifting, but I do know where every real thinking patriot will stand in the end, and that's by the Constitution.

We can't have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint.

The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end.

We are imperfect. We cannot expect perfect government.

Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

Politics makes me sick.

If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.

No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.

I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.

Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much.

There is only one thing I wast to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.

Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.

If they will play fair I will play fair, but if they won't then I reserve all my rights to do anything I find myself able to do.

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.