Thomas Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) was a Democratic Party political leader who served the 28th president of the United States from 1913 until 1921. He led the country into World War I, played a principal role in the ensuing peace negotiations, and led the creation of the League of Nations. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919.
Wilson was a renowned professor of law and political science and an inventive president of Princeton University before he launched his exceptional political career, first as governor of the state of New Jersey and then as president of the United States.
As President, Wilson carried out a series of successful administrative and fiscal reforms. His “New Freedom” policy cut trade tariffs, imposed the first federal income tax, recognized the banking system, formed the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission, increased protection for trade unions, boosted workmen’s compensation, and set restrictions on child labor.
Following the outbreak of World War I in Europe in 1914, America preserved its neutral status. However, when the Germans reintroduced unlimited submarine warfare, Wilson entered the war on the Allied side in April 1917. Wilson’s well-known “Fourteen Points” speech of January 1918 stressed the principles of democracy and self-determination, and guided an eventual peace treaty that ended the war.
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No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all-disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report….
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Deception/Lying
There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Power
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Friendship, Feelings
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
—Woodrow Wilson
A radical is one of whom people say ‘He goes too far.’ A conservative, on the other hand, is one ‘who doesn’t go far enough.’ Then there is the reactionary, ‘one who doesn’t go at all.’ All these terms are more or less objectionable, wherefore we have coined the term progressive.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Progress
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers. They see things in the soft haze of a spring day or in the red fire of a long winter’s evening. Some of us let these dreams die, but others nourish and protect them; nurse them through bad days till they bring them to the sunshine and light which comes always to those who hope that their dreams will come true.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Growth, Dreams
There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Peace
No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Leaders, Leadership
You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
I would rather lose in a cause that will someday win, than win in a cause that will someday lose.
—Woodrow Wilson
Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions; with their individuality and independence of choice in matters of business they have lost all their individual choice within the field of morals.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Business
No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Learning
I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage him to advertise the fact by speaking.
—Woodrow Wilson
Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Character
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
—Woodrow Wilson
There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.
—Woodrow Wilson
Topics: Service, Sacrifice
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