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.
A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.
What we seek is the reign of law, based upon the consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.
Neutrality is a negative word. It does not express what America ought to feel. We are not trying to keep out of trouble; we are trying to preserve the foundations on which peace may be rebuilt.
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.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
America is not anything if it consists of each of us. It is something only if it consists of all of us.
America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny as he chooses.
Politics I conceive to be nothing more than the science of the ordered progress of society along the lines of greatest usefulness and convenience to itself.
I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail.
We have not given science too big a place in our education, but we have made a perilous mistake in giving it too great a preponderance in method in every other branch of study.
You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.