Let him [the President] once win the admiration and confidence of the country, and no other single force can withstand him, no combination of forces will easily overpower him.... If he rightly interpret the national thought and boldly insist upon it, he is irresistible; and the country never feels the zest of action so much as when the President is of such insight and caliber.
We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forego the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.
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.
Wilson was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, 'That depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes, 3 days. If half hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.'
"Genius is divine perseverance." Divine patience I believe he originally used, perseverance is better in my opinion. Genius I cannot claim nor even extra brightness but perseverance all can have.
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.
If you wish your children to be Christians you must really take the trouble to be Christian yourselves. Those are the only terms upon which the home will work the gracious miracle.
There is no indispensable man. The government will not collapse and go to pieces if any one of the gentlemen who are seeking to be entrusted with its guidance should be left at home.
The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickenswith the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.
What is the use of voting? We know that the machines of both parties are subsidized by the same persons, and therefore it is useless to turn in either direction.
To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free conference of untrammeled men united in the common interest.
Some Americans need hyphens in their names, because only part of them has come over; but when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.