There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that — Woodrow Wilson

"Opinion shifted uneasily, the while, the nation through. The unexpected scope and magnitude of the war, its slow and sullen movement, its anxious strain of varying fortune, its manifest upheaval of the vary foundations of government, turned mens hopes and fears now this way now that, threw their judgements all abroad, brought panic gusts of disquietude and dismay which lasted a long season through before any steady winds of purpose found their breath and their second quarter. For eighteen months Mr. Lincoln had waited upon opinion, with a patience which had deeply irritated all who wished radical action taken. He knew the hazards of time as well as any man; feared that at almost any moment news might come of the recognition of the southern Confederacy by the old governments abroad; knew how important success was to hold opinion at home no less than to check interference from without; was keenly conscious how the failures of the Army of the Potomac offset and neutralized the successes of the federal arms in the West; and realized to the full how awkward it was, whether for the government of opinion at home or over sea, to have no policy more handsome than conquest and subjugation. It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against States fighting for their independence to a war against States fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery, by making some open move for emancipation as the real motive of the struggle. Once make the war a struggle against slavery, and the world, it might be hoped, might see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not the South."

"You know that recently a workingman’s compensation act has gone by the board in one of our great states because it seemed to the supreme court of that state to be compulsory in its operation. Why, in their judgment, was it unconstitutional if it was compulsory? Because, being compulsory, it seemed to violate the principle of free contract. The principle of free contract being guaranteed by most of our state constitutions, it is held by most of our courts that the legislature can not impair it or take it away, and can not say to the employer and to the employe: “You must enter into a contract of employment under such and such conditions.” Now, I want to suggest to the lawyers present that they ask themselves this question: Is this an interference with real freedom of contract? That goes back to the question: Has the workingman of this country real freedom in making his contract? Here is a great industrial community; here are half a dozen factories, or, rather, half a dozen combinations of factories in one community. These men must take the labor offered them by those factories or let it alone. They must work upon the terms offered them or starve. Is that freedom of contract? Do you mean to say that you believe, in the face of the existing conditions, that the workmen of the year 1911 are in the condition of the workmen of the year 1850, when the individual workman went about and dealt with individual employers, and there was really freedom and circulation of freedom of contract? Those conditions have gone by, and we must see to it that men working in masses, under conditions that are not really conditions of free contract, are safeguarded in their lives and rights by our state legislatures. (Applause)"

"There are two beings who assess character instantly by looking into the eyes,—dogs and children. If a dog not naturally possessed of the devil will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience; and if a little child, from any other reason than mere timidity, looks you in the face, and then draws back and will not come to your knee, go home and look deeper yet into your conscience."

"Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life."

"The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them."

"It has never been natural, it has seldom been possible, in this country for learning to seek a place apart and hold aloof from affairs. It is only when society is old, long settled to its ways, confident in habit, and without self-questioning upon any vital point of conduct, that study can affect seclusion and despise the passing interests of the day."