Presidents Of The United States

"The Negro says, "Now." Others say, "Never." The voice of responsible Americans — the voice of those who died here and the great man who spoke here — their voices say, "Together." There is no other way."

"We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences, that no one can perceive, nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power, but we will not surrender and we will not retreat, for behind our American pledge lies the determination and resources, I believe, of all of the American nation."

"I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle."

"Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life."

"I am going to build the kind of nation that President Roosevelt hoped for, President Truman worked for and President Kennedy died for."

"The same society which receives the rewards of technology must, as a cooperating whole, take responsibility for control. To deal with these new problems will require a new conservation. We must not only protect the countryside and save it from destruction, we must restore what has been destroyed and salvage the beauty and charm of our cities. Our conservation must be not just the classic conservation of protection and development, but a creative conservation of restoration and innovation. Its concern is not with nature alone, but with the total relation between man and the world around him. Its object is not just man's welfare, but the dignity of man's spirit."

"The American city should be a collection of communities where every member has a right to belong. It should be a place where every man feels safe on his streets and in the house of his friends. It should be a place where each individual’s dignity and self-respect is strengthened by the respect and affection of his neighbors. It should be a place where each of us can find the satisfaction and warmth which comes from being a member of the community of man. This is what man sought at the dawn of civilization. It is what we seek today."

"There are no problems which we cannot solve together, and there are very few which any of us can settle by himself."

"Our government is united in its determination to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia."

"This has been a year without precedent in the history of relations between the Executive and the Legislative Branches of our Government. This session of Congress has enacted more major legislation, met more national needs, disposed of more national issues than any other session of this century or the last."

"We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere."

"And I just want to tell you this — we're in favor of a lot of things and we're against mighty few."

"The purpose of protecting the life of our Nation and preserving the liberty of our citizens is to pursue the happiness of our people. Our success in that pursuit is the test of our success as a Nation."

"Poverty must not be a bar to learning, and learning must offer an escape from poverty."

"Fuck your parliament and your constitution. America is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fleas continue itching the elephant, they may just get whacked good ... We pay a lot of good American dollars to the Greeks, Mr. Ambassador. If your Prime Minister gives me talk about democracy, parliament and constitution, he, his parliament and his constitution may not last long ..."

"You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying, "Now you are free to go where you want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please." You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "You are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates. And this is the next and the more profound stage of the battle for civil rights. We seek not just freedom but opportunity. We seek not just legal equity but human ability, not just equality as a right and a theory, but equality as a fact, and equality as a result."

"Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime—and mine."

"Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact. To the extent that the proclamation of emancipation is not fulfilled in fact, to that extent we shall have fallen short of assuring freedom to the free."

"[[Gerald Ford|[Gerald] Ford]]'s economics are the worst thing that's happened to this country since pantyhose ruined finger-fucking."

"This civil rights program about which you have heard so much is a farce and a sham; an effort to set up a police state in the guise of liberty. I am opposed to that program. I fought it in the Congress. It is the province of the state to run its own elections. I am opposed to the anti-lynching bill because the federal government has no business enacting a law against one kind of murder than another ... If a man can tell you who you must hire, he can tell you who not to employ. I have met this head on."

"This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep, personal tragedy. I know the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best; that is all I can do. I ask for your help and God's."

"I am so proud of our system of government, of our free enterprise, where our incentive system and our men who head our big industries are willing to get up at daylight and work until midnight to offer employment and create new jobs for people, where our men working there will try to get decent wages but will sit across the table and not act like cannibals, but will negotiate and reason things out together."

"The challenge of the next half century is whether we have the wisdom to use that wealth to enrich and elevate our national life, and to advance the quality of our American civilization…. The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an end to poverty and racial injustice, to which we are totally committed in our time. But that is just the beginning. The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where leisure is a welcome chance to build and reflect, not a feared cause of boredom and restlessness. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where man can renew contact with nature. It is a place which honors creation for its own sake and for what it adds to the understanding of the race. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods. But most of all, the Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor."

"Wilson's parents were not Virginians. His father was born in Ohio, and his mother was born on the border between England and Scotland. Like many people from the Valley of Virginia, both of his parents sprang from Scottish stock. The older Wilsons learned to love Virginia and taught their son to love it too. In later years a newspaper writer said Wilson was a member of an old Virginia family. Wilson commented, "Of course, this is not true, but I wish I could say it were true." He felt that way because he was a Virginian in habits and thoughts. He said that he could speak out among Virginians because they were men of his "own race and breeding." Nowhere else, he believed, have the American traditions and ideals been kept so unbroken as they have in Virginia."

"Where Coolidge stood on the race issue is clear, but he did not take any concrete steps to ease the burden of discrimination. Nevertheless, the conservative Coolidge has had a far better press on the race issue than the progressive Woodrow Wilson, who was one of the most bigoted persons ever to hold the nation's highest office."

"The Democrat Wilson was a dyed-in-the-wool bigot who as president tried to rid the national government of its few black employees, save, of course, those who could be cooks, waiters, drivers, or fill other kinds of menial jobs. Wilson was, indeed, as great a bigot toward blacks, as today's Democratic president is."

"They will not forget him in the future. He is the first leader in the history of society who has treated the ancient dream of a peaceful world as something more than wishful thinking, the first who was willing to stake all in drawing the nations of the world together in an effort to make that "just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations" for which Abraham Lincoln pleaded. In Paris in 1919 Woodrow Wilson actually persuaded the leaders of the majority of the earth's nations to help him build and set up a machine for such a peace…The world will not forget the man who led in this effort to achieve enduring peace. That is what I was saying in those bitter days and have been saying in all the melancholy ones since."

"I was not alone. The atmosphere, after the joys of the armistice, was strange and foreboding for those of us who sought a world of peace and international comity. Woodrow Wilson had, as Martin Luther King had, a dream, and I shared that dream—all fourteen points of it—and watched it come to nothing. (I was in the press gallery of the House of Representatives when President Woodrow Wilson returned from Europe and addressed Congress. I saw Senator Henry Cabot Lodge avoiding him. I heard Wilson's muted passion, and I cried.) What a splendid vision the League of Nations was; how sickening to watch it scuttled."

"Wilson was a virulent racist who imposed white supremacist policies while serving as president of the United States."

"Wilson was as much a Utopian as Lenin. He, too, planned to end the Balance of Power in Europe, not to restore it. As well, he was in idealistic competition with the Bolsheviks. He wished to show that America's war-aims were, like theirs, 'anti-imperialistic', and so to persuade them to continue in the war. The Fourteen Points laid down on 8 January 1918 were the outcome. Self-determination was to supersede the historic states of Europe. Belgium, of course, was to recover her independence; Alsace and Lorraine were to return to France, and all Russian territory was to be evacuated. But, as well, Poland was to be restored; the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Balkans freed. Secret diplomacy was to be ended, and a League of Nations to take the place of the Balance of Power. The defeat of Germany was for Wilson merely a preliminary, whereas to Great Britain and France it was the essential aim. Yet they did not acquiesce in the Fourteen Points solely in order to commit the United States. They, too, had a public opinion which thought of 'a war to end war' and demanded a permanent peace, secured by some other means than the Balance of Power."

"There were ideas of balance in the governments of his time which Newton felt, and political thought is bound to Newtonian science in the work of Newton himself. Politics, said Woodrow Wilson, is turned into mechanics under the touch of Montesquieu. The principle of unity depended, for each system, upon some single law. The law of gravitation swung the worlds, keeping the free bodies in their places, reined to their courses with order and precision. The poise and balance of forces gave the universe its unity, one of symmetry and perfect adjustment. Wilson says, "The government of the United States was constructed upon the Whig theory of political dynamics, which was a sort of unconscious copy of the Newtonian theory of the universe." And, again, "The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life." Having described one fallacy, Wilson goes on toward another: he would hope that we would substitute the science of Darwin for the science of Newton."

"The date of March 4 may not have any significance in the African-American community other than personal birthdays and wedding anniversaries. However, March 4, 2013 will mark the centennial of the inauguration of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States. On that day President Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration will be celebrated in Washington, D.C. Why would March 4 and Woodrow Wilson be significant for African Americans?"

"A few weeks after Mr. Wilson became President, four of us went to see him. And the President, of course, was polite and as much of a gentleman as he always was. He told of his own support, when he had been governor of New Jersey, of a state referendum on suffrage, which had failed. He said that he thought this was the way suffrage should come, through state referendums, not through Congress. That’s all we accomplished. We said we were going to try and get it through Congress, that we would like to have his help and needed his support very much. And then we sent him another delegation and another and another and another and another and another and another—every type of women’s group we could get. We did this until 1917, when the war started and the President said he couldn’t see any more delegations. (So you began picketing the White House?) We said we would have a perpetual delegation right in front of the White House, so he wouldn’t forget. (this perpetual delegation, or picketing, continued until the President changed his position?) Yes. Since the President had made it clear that he wouldn’t see any more delegations in his office, we felt that pickets outside the White House would be the best way to remind him of our cause. Every day when he went out for his daily ride, as he drove through our picket line he always took off his hat and bowed to us. We respected him very much. I always thought he was a great President. Years later, when I was in Geneva [Switzerland] working with the World Woman’s Party, I was always so moved when I would walk down to the League of Nations and see the little tribute to Woodrow Wilson"

"The President has received me twice with very great kindness. He is a man who does not resemble his photographs at all. A determined-looking gentleman with whom one would not care to be in antagonism, he is about as tall as I am, more slightly built, very quiet in his manner, compresses more meaning into a few words than any other American I have met, uses more American in his speech than I had expected, is, I believe, with his family quite a hermit, is always surrounded with a bodyguard of detectives, does not entertain privately, bears his worries remarkably well, is quite humorous and amusing and, incidentally, the most powerful individual in the world. I should say that his fault is lack of power of delegation. He called himself to me "the clearing house of the Government". Everything has to be "put up" to him. I like him thoroughly and believe that I shall get on with him."

"when President Wilson went to Paris for the peace conference, he was always issuing some wonderful, idealistic statement that was impossible to reconcile with what he was doing at home. And we had an enormous bell—I don’t recall how we ever got such an enormous bell—and every time Wilson would make one of these speeches, we would toll this great bell, and then somebody would go outside with the President’s speech and, with great dignity, burn it in our little caldron."

"That Woodrow Wilson was so keen an advocate of [the League of Nations] is explained by many factors. For one thing he was a jurist and an historian and therefore trained to look at historical fact and political possibilities with a sense of intellectual responsibility. For another he was a very European and, it may even be said, an English personality as opposed to the middle western neo-American type... He was learned not only in the political thought of the Fathers of the American constitution, but also in the great English masters... If ever a man was formed to be link between what was best in the political traditions of our two nations it was Woodrow Wilson. But he was recognizably a Liberal, and therefore viewed with suspicion by the Tories. Moreover, he was hated by the majority of the wealthy in the Eastern States, and upper-class Englishmen, meeting similar persons in America, were not likely to hear much good of him."

"President Woodrow Wilson, pacifist, changes his mind under pressure. War is declared."

"Woodrow Wilson proclaimed that this country entered World War I “to make the world safe for democracy.” This was the very same President who issued executive orders segregating most of the eating and rest-room facilities for federal employees. [...] Obviously, black people were not included in Woodrow Wilson’s defense perimeter. Whatever the life of blacks might have been under German rule, this country clearly did not fight Germany for the improvement of the status of black people—under the saved democracy—in this land."

"Wilson's principles survived the eclipse of the Versailles system and that they still guide European politics today: self-determination, democratic government, collective security, international law, and a league of nations. Wilson may not have gotten everything he wanted at Versailles, and his treaty was never ratified by the Senate, but his vision and his diplomacy, for better or worse, set the tone for the twentieth century. France, Germany, Italy, and Britain may have sneered at Wilson, but every one of these powers today conducts its European policy along Wilsonian lines. What was once dismissed as visionary is now accepted as fundamental. This was no mean achievement, and no European statesman of the twentieth century has had as lasting, as benign, or as widespread an influence."

"I was seated between Jesus Christ and Napoleon."

"[David Lloyd George] said he thought him more sincere than he had done at first. He talks a lot of sentimental platitudes, but he believes them. He is not a hypocrite nor a humbug. He is sincere. The difference between his point of view and that of old Clemenceau is marked. The old boy believes in none of Wilson's gods and does not understand them."

"Woodrow Wilson dreamed a dream of a League of Nations, but he died before the promise was delivered."

"[David Lloyd George] said he felt sure Wilson would occupy a great place in history. Neither he (LG) nor Clemenceau in connection with the Peace Conference had done any special thing which could be ear-marked as his work, whereas, for better or worse, Wilson had advocated an idea which had been embodied in the League of Nations. The League might fail, but it would be an historic fact."

"As a college undergraduate some decades ago, I was assigned an essay on the three most evil men of the 20th century. Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were obvious choices, and most of my fellow students chose from that group. I agreed on Hitler and Lenin, but felt that Stalin and Mao were just additional manifestations of the evil Lenin embodied. My third choice was Woodrow Wilson, which upset my professor at the time, but which I stand by today. The Nazis and the Soviet Empire are gone and while meager bands of the admirers of both survive to inhabit steamy corners of various ideological swamps, the evil for which Hitler and Mao were responsible died with the last century. Woodrow Wilson’s legacy, however, simply won’t go away. Schools and think tanks are named for the man and various polls continue to rate him as a great or near-great president. The “progressive” politics of today’s Democrats are part of his legacy, as is the instability of much of the world in which we live. Wilson, the first college president to occupy the White House, banned blacks from government restrooms, was the first president to openly attack the U.S. Constitution and eagerly support laws to prosecute and imprison those who disagreed with his policies. His hostility to black Americans was matched only by his antipathy toward Italian, German and Irish Americans and his desire to rid the nation of those he referred to dismissively as “hyphenated Americans” and against who he railed incessantly."

"To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that party."

"When we had finished this we discussed the English Labor program recently announced at Nottingham. Much to my surprise, he said he did not disagree with it further than the minimum wage which he confessed to know little about and he had not thought of any visible way by which it could be maintained. We discussed the trend of liberal opinion in the world and came to the conclusion that the wise thing to do was to lead the movement intelligently and sympathetically and not allow the ignoble element to run away with the situation as they had done in Russia. He spoke of the necessity of forming a new political party in order to achieve these ends. He did not believe the Democratic Party could be used as an instrument to go as far as it would be needful to go and largely because of the reactionary element in the South. I disagreed with him. I thought it would be unwise to attempt the building of a new party without first seeing whether the Democratic Party could be forced into the direction we thought advisable. I did not believe the people of the South would sustain the reactionary element provided the President came out strongly enough against them. I do not know whether I convinced him but at least he stopped arguing against my opinion. Again let me say that the President has started so actively on the liberal road that I find myself, instead of leading as I always did at first, rather in the rear and holding him back. He turned to me and said almost pathetically, “that is a big program for a tired old man to think of undertaking.”"

"From Ulysses Grant to William McKinley, the prevailing conservative doctrine was a severe and self defeating laissez faire that left the big fish to eat the little fish while preaching the merits of social Darwinism and the survival of the fittest. Good presidents like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson were those who dared risk the power of government to challenge this."

"Twice in this century, the world has been threatened by a catastrophe; twice this catastrophe was bom in Europe, and twice you Americans, along with others, were called upon to save Europe, the whole world and yourselves. The first rescue mission—among other things—provided significant help to us Czechs and Slovaks. Thanks to the great support of your President Wilson, our first president, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, could found our modern independent state. He founded it, as you know, on the same principles on which the United States of America had been founded, as Masaryk’s manuscripts held by the Library of Congress testify."

"In the eighty years since he left office, Wilson’s reputation has risen and fallen regularly—but he remains as fascinating and central to an understanding of modern American foreign policy as ever. His many supporters, from Herbert Hoover to Robert McNamara, have argued that his enemies in both Paris and the United States Senate were responsible for the undoing of one of history’s noblest dreams. Others, including Senator Jesse Helms, have viewed Wilson’s determined adversary, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, as a principled protector of American sovereignty and charged Wilson with seeking to undermine the American Constitution. Another school of thought, especially prevalent in the later years of the Cold War, criticized Wilson for unrealistic, overly moralistic goals: among its best-known practitioners are George F. Kennan and Henry Kissinger, who accused Wilson of “extraordinary conceit,” even while conceding that he “originated what would become the dominant intellectual school of American foreign policy.” (To Kissinger’s horror, his president, Richard Nixon placed Wilson’s portrait in the place of honor in the Cabinet Room.)"

"Woodrow Wilson has now joined his worthy colleagues in the jingo movement, echoing their clamor for preparedness and their howl of "America for Americans." The difference between Wilson and Roosevelt is this: Roosevelt, a born bully, uses the club; Wilson, the historian, the college professor, wears the smooth polished university mask, but underneath it he, like Roosevelt, has but one aim, to serve the big interests, to add to those who are growing phenomenally rich by the manufacture of military supplies."