The man who reads everything is like the man who eats everything: he can digest nothing, and the penalty of crowding one's mind with other men's thoughts is to have no thoughts of one's own.
Things get very lonely in Washington sometimes. The real voice of the great people of America sometimes sounds faint and distant in that strange city. You hear politics until you wish that both parties were smothered in their own gas.
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.
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.'
Our most dangerous tendency is to expect too much of government, and at the same time do for it too little. . . . We must strive for normalcy to reach stability.
I am a most unhappy man. I accidentally ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. Our government is no longer based on the freedom of opinion, nor on the conviction and the majority decision, it is now a government which is subjected to the conviction and the compulsion of a small group of dominant men.
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.
Be militant! Be an organization that is going to do things! If you can find older men who will give you countenance and acceptableleadership, follow them; but if you cannot, organize separately and dispense with them. There are only two sorts of men to be associated with when something is to be done: Those are young men and men who never grow old.
I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.