William Faulkner
American writer (1897-1962)
Woodrow Wilson was an American politician who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a progressive Democrat who previously served as the governor of New Jersey and the president of Princeton University. As president, Wilson changed the nation’s economic policies and led the U.S. into World War I, while also being the leading architect of the League of Nations.
Table of Contents
Joseph Ruggles Wilson Jr.
Marion Morton Wilson
Annie Josephine Wilson
Edith Bolling Galt Wilson
Ellen Axson Wilson
Margaret Woodrow Wilson
Jessie Woodrow Wilson Sayre
Eleanor Wilson McAdoo
Thomas Woodrow Wilsonwas an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a progressive Democrat who previously served as the governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913 and as the president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. As president, Wilson changed the nation’s economic policies and led the United States into World War I. He was the leading architect of the League of Nations, and his progressive stance on foreign policy came to be known as Wilsonianism.
Born in Staunton, Virginia, Wilson grew up in the Southern United States during the American Civil War and Reconstruction era. After earning a Ph.D. in history and political science from Johns Hopkins University, Wilson taught at several colleges prior to being appointed president of Princeton University, where he emerged as a prominent spokesman for progressivism in higher education. Wilson served as governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913, during which he broke with party bosses and won the passage of several progressive reforms. Wilson defeated incumbent Republican William Howard Taft and third-party nominee Theodore Roosevelt to easily win the 1912 presidential election, becoming the first Southerner to do so since 1848.
During his first year as president, Wilson authorized the widespread imposition of segregation inside the federal bureaucracy and his opposition to women’s suffrage drew protests. His first term was largely devoted to pursuing passage of his progressive New Freedom domestic agenda. His first major priority was the Revenue Act of 1913, which began the modern income tax, and the Federal Reserve Act, which created the Federal Reserve System. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the U.S. declared neutrality as Wilson tried to negotiate a peace between the Allied and Central Powers. He narrowly won re-election in 1916 against Charles Evans Hughes. In April 1917, Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany in response to its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that sank American merchant ships. Wilson concentrated on diplomacy, issuing the Fourteen Points that the Allies and Germany accepted as a basis for post-war peace. He wanted the off-year elections of 1918 to be a referendum endorsing his policies, but instead, the Republicans took control of Congress. After the Allied victory in November 1918, Wilson attended the Paris Peace Conference. Wilson successfully advocated for the establishment of a multinational organization, the League of Nations, which was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles that he signed, but back home he rejected a Republican compromise that would have allowed the Senate to ratify the Versailles Treaty and join the League.
Wilson had intended to seek a third term in office but had a stroke in October 1919 that left him incapacitated. His wife and his physician controlled Wilson, and no significant decisions were made. Meanwhile, his policies alienated German- and Irish-American Democrats and the Republicans won a landslide in the 1920 presidential election. Scholars have generally ranked Wilson in the upper tier of U.S. presidents, although he has been criticized for supporting racial segregation. His liberalism nevertheless lives on as a major factor in American foreign policy, and his vision of national self-determination resonates globally to this day.
Woodrow Wilson was an American politician and academic who served as the 28th president of the United States from 1913 to 1921. He was a progressive Democrat who previously served as the governor of New Jersey and the president of Princeton University.
Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, and died on February 3, 1924.
As president, Woodrow Wilson changed the nation’s economic policies, led the United States into World War I, and was the leading architect of the League of Nations.
Woodrow Wilson was a progressive Democrat who pursued a progressive domestic agenda, known as the New Freedom, and took a progressive stance on foreign policy, which came to be known as Wilsonianism.
As president, Woodrow Wilson led the United States into World War I in 1917 in response to Germany’s policy of unrestricted submarine warfare that sank American merchant ships.
At the Paris Peace Conference, Woodrow Wilson successfully advocated for the establishment of the League of Nations, which was incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles that he signed.
Woodrow Wilson had a stroke in October 1919 that left him incapacitated, and his wife and physician controlled the government, with no significant decisions being made during this time.
The world is not looking for servants, there are plenty of these, but for masters, men who form their purposes and then carry them out, let the consequences be what they may.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I will not speak with disrespect of the Republican Party. I always speak with respect of the past.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
He is not a true man of the world who knows only the present fashions of it.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
By ‘radical,’ I understand one who goes too far; by ‘conservative,’ one who does not go far enough; by ‘reactionary,’ one who won’t go at all.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Interest does not tie nations together; it sometimes separates them. But sympathy and understanding does unite them.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
There can be no equality or opportunity if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they cannot alter, control, or singly cope with.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I am not sure that it is of the first importance that you should be happy. Many an unhappy man has been of deep service to himself and to the world.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Property as compared with humanity, as compared with the red blood in the American people, must take second place, not first place.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The method of political science is the interpretation of life; its instrument is insight, a nice understanding of subtle, unformulated conditions.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Absolute identity with one’s cause is the first and great condition of successful leadership.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The only use of an obstacle is to be overcome. All that an obstacle does with brave men is, not to frighten them, but to challenge them.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Never attempt to murder a man who is committing suicide.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Golf is a game in which one endeavors to control a ball with implements ill adapted for the purpose.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
If a dog will not come to you after having looked you in the face, you should go home and examine your conscience.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The seed of revolution is repression.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and discuss with absolute frankness.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal – to discover and maintain liberty among men.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
So far as the colleges go, the sideshows are swallowing up the circus.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
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.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The history of liberty is a history of resistance.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Tell me what is right and I will fight for it.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common good is the greatest creed.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I have come slowly into possession of such powers as I have. I receive the opinions of my day. I do not conceive them. But I receive them into a vivid mind.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
The awakening of the people of China to the possibilities under free government is the most significant, if not the most momentous, event of our generation.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
I have long enjoyed the friendship and companionship of Republicans because I am by instinct a teacher, and I would like to teach them something.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921
Princeton is no longer a thing for Princeton men to please themselves with. Princeton is a thing with which Princeton men must satisfy the country.
president of the United States from 1913 to 1921