Woodrow Wilson

Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale.

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of …

The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually.

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.

It will take one hundred years to eradicate this prejudice, and we must deal with it as practical men. Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen.

[Reconstruction was detestable] not because the Republican Party was dreaded but because the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded.

The highest and best form of efficiency is the spontaneous cooperation of a free people.

What is at at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice, — no mere peace of shreds and patches.

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

5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims.

2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war.

1. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at.

All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.

we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a …

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

Armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.

If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take …

We are at the parting of the ways.

A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is privately concentrated.

The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.

So, our honest politicians and our honorable corporation heads owe it to their reputations to bring their activities out into the open.

No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.

All that progressives ask or desire is permission — in an era when "development," "evolution," is the scientific word — to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a …