Woodrow Wilson quotes for UPSC

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

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.

If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.

I would … rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than triumph in a cause that I know some day will lose.

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

Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.

No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.

I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow, and I have borrowed a lot since I read it to you first.

Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.

Uncompromising thought is the luxury of the closeted recluse.

It is getting to be harder to run a constitution than to frame one.

Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work.

Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.

Government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton.

Administration is the most obvious part of government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself.

The way to stop financial joy-riding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.

The only thing that has ever distinguished America among the nations is that she has shown that all men are entitled to the benefits of the law.

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.

The seed of revolution is repression.

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

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

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

Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.

There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with.

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

The object of education is not merely to draw out the powers of the individual mind: it is rather its right object to draw all minds to a proper adjustment to the physical and social world in which they are to have their life and their development: to enlighten, strengthen and make fit.

Business underlies everything in our national life, including our spiritual life. Witness the fact that in the Lord's Prayer, the first petition is for daily bread. No one can worship God or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.

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 such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.

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.

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.

The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history. It represents the experiences made by men and women, the experiences of those who do and live under that flag.

There is a very great thrill to be had from the memories of the American Revolution, but the American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation, and the duty laid upon us by that beginning is the duty of bringing the things then begun to a noble triumph of completion.

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.

You deal in the raw material of opinion, and, if my convictions have any validity, opinion ultimately governs the world.

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

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.

You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.

At every crisis in one's life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.

You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.