Quote collection
459 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The success of a party means little except when the nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose. No one can mistake the purpose for which the nation now seeks to use the Democratic party. It seeks to use it to interpret a change in its own plans and point of view."
"There has been something crude and heartless and unfeeling in our haste to suceed and be great. Our thought has been 'Let every man look out for himself, let every generation look out for itself,' while we reared giant machinery which made it impossible that any but those who stood at the levers of control should have a chance to look out for themselves."
"An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy"
"I had rather be defeated in a cause that will ultimately triumph than triumph in a cause that will ultimately be defeated."
"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."
"A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks."
"The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates."
"There is no cause half so sacred as the cause of the people. There is no idea so uplifting as the idea of the service of humanity."
"By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all."
"There is little for the great part of the history of the world except the bitter tears of pity and the hot tears of wrath."
"As compared with the college politician, the real article seems like an amateur."
"All the extraordinary men I have ever known were chiefly extraordinary in their own estimation."
"There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States."
"The question of armaments, whether on land or sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical question connected with the future fortunes of nations and of mankind."
"...it would be a mistake...to ascribe to Roman legal conceptions an undivided sway over the development of law and institutions during the Middle Ages... The Laws of Moses as well as the laws of Rome contributed suggestions and impulse to the men and institutions which were to prepare the modern world; and if we could have but eyes to see... we should readily discover how very much besides religion we owe to the Jew."
"Where the great force lies, there must be the sanction of peace."
"This little world, this little state, this little commonwealth of our own."
"We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world.... We are partners with the rest. What affects mankind isinevitably our affair as well as the nations of Europe and Asia."
"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."
"Progressiveness means not standing still when everything else is moving."