I would never read a book if it were possible for me to talk half an hour with the man who wrote it.
Today’s greatest labor-saving device is tomorrow.
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.
A man may be defeated by his own secondary successes.
I have the feeling that he would rather see a good cause fail than succeed if he were not the head of it.
I am all kinds of a democrat, so far as I can discover but the root of the whole business is this, that I believe in the patriotism and energy and initiative of the average man.
When you come into the presence of a leader of men, you know that you have come into the presence of fire – that it is best not uncautiously to touch that man – that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.
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.
It is easier to move a cemetery than to change a curriculum.
What every man seeks is satisfaction. He deceives himself so long as he imagines it to lie in self-indulgence.
I used to be a lawyer, but now I am a reformed character.
No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.
In the last analysis, my fellow country men, as we in America would be the first to claim, a people are responsible for the acts of their government.
If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if an hour, I am ready now.
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.
Have you thought of the sufferings of Armenia? You poured out your money to help succor the Armenians after they suffered; now set your strength so that they shall never suffer again.
The growth of our nation and all its activities are in the hands of a few men.
And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you – bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them.
The man who disparages music as a luxury and non-essential is doing the nation an injury. Music now, more than ever before, is a national need.
Thought cannot conceive of anything that may not be brought to expression. He who first uttered it may be only the suggester, but the doer will appear.