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America
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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.
-Woodrow Wilson
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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.
-Woodrow Wilson
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The interesting and inspiring thing about America is that she asks nothing for herself except what she has a right to ask for humanity itself.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Bread
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In the Lords prayer, the first petition is for daily bread; no one can worship God, or love his neighbor on an empty stomach.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Business
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Most men are individuals no longer so far as their business, its activities, or its moralities are concerned. They are not units but fractions.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Caution
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Caution is the confidential agent of selfishness.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Change
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If you want to make enemies, try to change something.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Character
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If you will think about what you ought to do for other people, your character will take care of itself. Character is a by-product, and any man who devotes himself to its cultivation in his own case will become a selfish prig.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Character is a by-product; it is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.
-Woodrow Wilson
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-Woodrow Wilson
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Criticism
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It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shouting at you.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Curiosity
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Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interest of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Deception/Lying
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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, from Congressional Government, p. 109
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Democracy
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I believe in democracy, because it releases the energies of every human being.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
-Woodrow Wilson
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America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it.
-Woodrow Wilson
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That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.
-Woodrow Wilson
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The world must be made safe for democracy.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Dreams
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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 great 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 sincerely hope that their dreams will come true.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Economics
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The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless.
-Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom 1913, Chapter 1
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Excellence
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Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Fear
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Fear God and you need not fear anyone else.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Friends
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Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
-Woodrow Wilson
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You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Growth
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When I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Honor
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The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.
-Woodrow Wilson
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There is no question what the roll of honor in America is. The roll of honor consists of the names of men who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Individuality
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America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Judging, Judgment
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One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty counsels. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Leadership
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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
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Learning
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No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Liberty
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Liberty never came from government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.
-Woodrow Wilson, Speech in New York, September 9, 1912
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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.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Love
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No thoughtful man ever came to the end of his life, and had time and a little space of calm from which to look back upon it, who did not know and acknowledge that it was what he had done unselfishly and for others, and nothing else, that satisfied him in the retrospect, and made him feel that he had played the man.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Loyalty
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Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Military, the
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When they the American soldiers came, they found fit comrades for their courage and their devotion.... Joining hands with them, the men of America gave the greatest of all gifts - the gift of life and the gift of spirit.
-Woodrow Wilson, Speaking in the cemetery at Suresnes, outside Paris, amid the graves of American soldiers most of whom had died in the advance on Chateau Thierry - Memorial Day, 1919.
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Minorities
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You cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Patience
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All things come to him who waits -- provided he knows what he is waiting for.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Patriotism
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The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment not of sentiment, but of history.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Peace
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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
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They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last, only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of racial and national allegiance.
-Woodrow Wilson, Address of the President of the United States to the Senate, January 22, 1917
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Politics
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Prosperity is necessarily the first theme of a political campaign.
-Woodrow Wilson
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The success of a party means little more than that the Nation is using the party for a large and definite purpose. It seeks to use and interpret a change in its own plans and point of view.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Power
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There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Procrastination
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Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Today's greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Progress
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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
-Woodrow Wilson
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Prophecy
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No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Protest
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Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere -- so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive -- that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.
-Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, 1913
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Questions
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We should not only master questions,but also act upon them,and act definitely.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Quotations
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I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Responsibility
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Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Self Respect
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All the extraordinary men I have known were extraordinary in their own estimation.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Selfishness
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A little group of willful men reflecting no opinion but their own have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Service
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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
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Speech (freedom of)
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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, Speech, 1919
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Students
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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.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Success & Failure
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I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Unity
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We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We stand together until the end.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Victory
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I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose!
-Woodrow Wilson
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War
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There is no such 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.
-Woodrow Wilson, Speech in Philadelphia, May 10, 1915
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World
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We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Youth
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The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.
-Woodrow Wilson
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Books by and about Woodrow Wilson
