“No republic can permanently exist when it becomes a republic of classes, where the man feels not the interest of the whole people, but the interest of the particular class to which he belongs.”

Speech in Washington, DC,
November 22, 1904

“The object of government is the welfare of the people.”

Speech in Chicago,
April 10, 1899

“We shall be guilty of criminal folly if we fail to insist on the complete and thoroughgoing unification of our people.”

The Great Adventure
1918

“We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond.”

Speech in Chicago
April 10, 1899

“Washington and Lincoln set the standard of conduct for the public servants of this people.”

Letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan
November 6, 1908

“Neither in national nor in private affairs is it ordinarily advisable to make a bluff which cannot be put through.”

The Outlook
1913

“In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction.”

Sorbonne Address,
April 23, 1910

“The one great reason for our having succeeded as no other people ever has, is to be found in that common sense which has enabled us to preserve the largest possible individual freedom.”

Life of Gouverneur Morris
1888

“It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought.”

Atlantic Monthly
August, 1894

“We must act with justice and broad generosity and charity toward one another and toward all men if we are to make this Republic what it must and shall be made.”

Speech in New York City
February 12, 1913

“No man can get power without at the same time acquiring the duty of being held to a rigid accountability for his use of that power.”

Speech in Madison, WI
April 15, 1911