Woodrow Wilson Quotes About War

Quotes about: War

• It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their indepdence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery...and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Running, War, Fighting

  Woodrow Wilson (1903). “A History of The American Poeple”

• ...I do not want a government that will take care of me, I want a government that will make other men take their hands off me so I can take care of myself.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Men, Hands

  Woodrow Wilson, Mario R. DiNunzio (2006). “Woodrow Wilson: Essential Writings and Speeches of the Scholar-president”, p.359, NYU Press

• This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Great War, Ends

  "A Day of Dedication".

• War isn’t declared in the name of God; it is a human affair entirely.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Names, Affair

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link (1980). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”

• Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Fighting, Men

  Woodrow Wilson (2015). “Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917”, p.399, Princeton University Press

• There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Peace, War, Power

  Woodrow Wilson (2015). “Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917”, p.265, Princeton University Press

• It must be a peace without victory... 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.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Memories, War, Mean

  Address to the Senate, January 22, 1917.

• Is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?

  Woodrow Wilson

  Children, War, Men

  "A Day of Dedication".

• There is such a thing as 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

  War, Fighting, Men

  Speech in Philadelphia, 10 May 1915, in Selected Addresses (1918) p. 88

• To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of national life.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Fighting, Brutality

  Woodrow Wilson (2015). “Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917”, p.399, Princeton University Press

• Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Presidential, Principles

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1966). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

• The Civil War created in this country what had never existed before - a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Country, War, Political

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson: Extracts from the Public Speeches of the Leader and Interpreter of American Democracy, with Masterpieces of Eloquence”, Best Books

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

  Woodrow Wilson

  Military, War, Army

  1917 Speech, Washington, 12 May.

• ...men are not put into this world to go the path of ease, they are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Pain, War, Struggle

  Woodrow Wilson (1976). “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson: 1910”

• I came from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and terrible ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamour for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or son of some poor widow away off in some modest community, or perhaps the scion of a great family, who will have to do the fighting.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Son, Fighting

  "The papers of Woodrow Wilson".

• War is only a sort of dramatic representation, a sort of dramatic symbol of a thousand forms of duty. I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Men, Shooting

  Woodrow Wilson (1916). “Wit and Wisdom of Woodrow Wilson: Extracts from the Public Speeches of the Leader and Interpreter of American Democracy, with Masterpieces of Eloquence”, Best Books

• The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Men, Office

• The Government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German government to a strict accountability for such acts of their naval authorities.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Government, Accountability

  Woodrow Wilson, Albert Fried (1965). “A Day of Dedication”, New York : Macmillan [1965]

• It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Heart, Fighting

  Address to Joint Session of Congress asking for declaration of war, 2 Apr. 1917

• I can predict with absolute certainty that within another generation there will be another world war if the nations of the world do not concert the method by which to prevent it.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Change, War, Generations

  Woodrow Wilson (1919). “Addresses of President Wilson”

• The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of thecivilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Flames, Years

• It has become a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved inits sweeping processes of change and settlement.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Race, People

  Woodrow Wilson (1918). “State Papers and Addresses”

• I am the friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America so long as I am able. . . . No course of my choosing or of their (nations at war) will lead to war. War can come only by the wilful acts and aggressions of others.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Mean, America

  Woodrow Wilson, Pope Benedict XV, James Wilford Garner, Frank D. Garland (1917). “Why We Fight Germany: Being the President's Addresses Relating to the Great War and His Reply to the Pope's Peace Proposal”

• Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Government, Principles

  Woodrow Wilson, Arthur Stanley Link, Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Princeton University (1966). “The papers of Woodrow Wilson”

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