Woodrow Wilson Quotes

It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation.

People call mean idealist. That is how I know that I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.

People and provinces must not be bartered about from sovereign to sovereign as if they were chattels, or pawns in a game. Self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle, which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.

In this war, we demand nothing that is peculiar to ourselves; only that the world be made fit and safe to live in. The programme of the world’s peace, therefore, is our programme.

Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best.

Those are American principles, American policies. We could stand for no others. They are also the principles of mankind, and must prevail.

America cannot be an ostrich, with its head in the sand.

We are constantly thinking of the great war…which saved the Union…but it was a war which did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before – a national consciousness.

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; 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.

I venture to speak a solemn word of warning. The United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name during these days that are to try men’s souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in action.

The people of the United States are drawn from many nations, and chiefly from the nations now at war. Some will wish one nation, others another, to succeed in this monumental struggle.

Human rights, national integrity, and opportunity as against material interests…are the issues that we now must face. I take this occasion to say that the United States will never again seek one additional foot of territory by conquest.

The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled, and the judge and the brother are one.