If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knocking him down, if that is the only basis upon which he will respect me, then for the sake of his soul I have got occasionally to knock him down.
I want to re-echo my hope that we may all work together for a great peace as distinguished from a mean peace.
It must be a peace without victory.
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.
Opinion is the great, indeed the only coordinating force in our system.
The wisest thing to do with a fool is to encourage him to hire a hall and discourse to his fellow-citizens. Nothing chills nonsense like exposure to the air.
An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy.
Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.
A man’s rootage is more important than his leafage.
Some of us let our dreams die, but others nourish and protect them, nurse them through bad days ’till they bring them to sunshine and light.
While we are fighting for freedom, we must see, among other things, that labor is free.
If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it.
If you lose your wealth, you have lost nothing; if you lose your health, you have lost something; but if you lose your character, you have lost everything.
As a matter of fact and experience, the more power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.
Surely a man has come to himself only when he has found the best that is in him, and has satisfied his heart with the highest achievement he is fit for.
We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency – clear disinterested thinking and fearless action.
The only place in the world that nothing has to be explained to me is the South.
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.
No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.
There are times when words seem empty and only actions seem great. Such a time has come, and in the Providence of God America will once more have an opportunity to show the world that she was born to save mankind.
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.