Woodrow Wilson Biography Quotes 63 Report mistakes

Early Life and Education
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born on December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia, to Joseph Ruggles Wilson, a Presbyterian minister, and Jessie Janet Woodrow Wilson. Raised largely in the American South during the Civil War and Reconstruction, he absorbed a culture of church-centered community life and public speaking that would shape his intellectual and political style. After an initial year at Davidson College, he entered the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), graduating in 1879. He studied law at the University of Virginia and briefly practiced in Atlanta, but scholarly interests drew him to Johns Hopkins University, where he completed a Ph.D. in 1886, an uncommon credential for an American public figure of his era. His early writings, including Congressional Government, reflected a lifelong preoccupation with constitutional structure and the proper balance between executive leadership and legislative deliberation.

Academic Career
Wilson taught at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University before returning to Princeton in 1890. Over the next two decades he became one of the nation's best-known political scientists and public intellectuals. As president of Princeton from 1902 to 1910, he pursued reforms to raise academic standards and introduced the preceptorial system, emphasizing small-group instruction. His drive to democratize campus life and curtail the social dominance of eating clubs brought him into conflict with powerful figures such as trustee Moses Taylor Pyne and graduate school dean Andrew Fleming West. The dispute over the location and character of a new graduate school, championed by West and backed by Pyne, contributed to Wilson's decision to leave academia for public service.

Rise in Politics and Governor of New Jersey
Recruited by New Jersey reformers, Wilson won the governorship in 1910. As governor he enacted a progressive program that included primary election reforms, public utility regulation, workers' compensation, and measures against political patronage. His administrative skill and reputation for principled independence swiftly put him on the national stage. In 1912 he secured the Democratic presidential nomination, aided by party leaders and reform allies. William Jennings Bryan's support proved important, and the split in the Republican Party between William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt opened a path for Wilson's victory.

First Presidential Term and Progressive Reform
Taking office in 1913, Wilson worked with congressional Democrats to pass a wave of domestic legislation. The Underwood Tariff lowered tariff barriers while the newly ratified Sixteenth Amendment enabled a federal income tax. The Federal Reserve Act created a central banking system, shaped by lawmakers such as Carter Glass and Robert L. Owen and administered in partnership with Treasury Secretary William Gibbs McAdoo, who was also Wilson's son-in-law through his marriage to Eleanor Randolph Wilson. Antitrust policy was strengthened through the Federal Trade Commission and the Clayton Antitrust Act. Wilson named Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court in 1916, and also appointed James C. McReynolds and John Hessin Clarke. Labor and farm measures, including the Adamson Act and the Federal Farm Loan Act, broadened the era's reforms. His first Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, resigned in 1915 over disagreements about the administration's stern response to German submarine warfare; Bryan's successor, Robert Lansing, became a central diplomatic figure.

Neutrality, War, and Mobilization
Although re-elected in 1916 over Charles Evans Hughes after campaigning on neutrality, Wilson led the nation into World War I in 1917 following Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram. He asked Congress for a declaration of war to make the world "safe for democracy", an ideal he turned into policy through the Selective Service Act and an unprecedented mobilization. Josephus Daniels headed the Navy with Franklin D. Roosevelt as his assistant, while Newton D. Baker led the War Department. The War Industries Board under Bernard Baruch coordinated production, and Herbert Hoover administered food relief. George Creel's Committee on Public Information managed propaganda. Wartime legislation, including the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act, tightened controls on dissent; the imprisonment of socialist leader Eugene V. Debs became a symbol of the era's civil liberties conflicts. Wilson's inner circle, notably his confidant Edward M. House and his press and political aide Joseph Tumulty, played key roles in navigating the domestic strains of wartime leadership.

The Fourteen Points and Paris
In January 1918 Wilson announced the Fourteen Points, a blueprint for a liberal international order grounded in open diplomacy, freedom of the seas, reduced armaments, national self-determination, and a League of Nations. At the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, he joined Georges Clemenceau of France, David Lloyd George of Britain, and Vittorio Orlando of Italy in the arduous task of forging peace. Wilson secured the League covenant but compromised on issues such as reparations and territorial settlements, drawing criticism from both idealists and realists. Tensions with House and with Secretary Lansing grew as Wilson centralized negotiations in his own hands. The failure to include significant Republican figures in the delegation complicated prospects for ratification at home, where Senator Henry Cabot Lodge led opposition to the treaty and its League commitments.

Struggle for Ratification and Political Opposition
Wilson refused to accept Lodge's reservations, believing they would cripple the League. He embarked on an exhausting national speaking tour to rally public support, pitting his vision against a coalition of irreconcilable and reservationist senators. After a collapse in Pueblo, Colorado, he returned to Washington, where on October 2, 1919, he suffered a severe stroke that left him partially paralyzed and impaired. First Lady Edith Bolling Galt Wilson managed access to the president, working closely with physician Cary T. Grayson and aide Joseph Tumulty in what she described as a stewardship. The Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles and League membership in 1919 and again in 1920, a defining defeat of Wilson's presidency. Domestic politics shifted toward conservatism; the Red Scare unfolded under Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, and the 1920 election brought Republican Warren G. Harding to the White House. Wilson, though eager for a Democratic platform ratifying his internationalism, could not run; the party nominated James M. Cox with Franklin D. Roosevelt as running mate, and they were decisively defeated.

Domestic Policies, Rights, and Race
Wilson's domestic legacy is complex. His administration saw both social progress and contraction of civil liberties. He ultimately endorsed women's suffrage during the war, appealing to the Senate in 1918 to pass what became the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920 after sustained efforts by activists including Alice Paul and Carrie Chapman Catt. At the same time, his administration oversaw the segregation of several federal offices, a policy advanced by officials such as Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson and Treasury and Navy administrators, a decision that entrenched racial discrimination in the federal workforce and has drawn enduring criticism. The White House screening of The Birth of a Nation further intensified controversy over his racial views. In foreign affairs beyond Europe, his administration intervened in Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, actions emblematic of an era of U.S. hemispheric assertiveness.

Family and Personal Life
Wilson married Ellen Axson in 1885. Ellen served as a popular and influential First Lady until her death in 1914, shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe. The couple had three daughters: Margaret Woodrow Wilson, who often served as White House hostess; Jessie Woodrow Wilson, who married Francis Bowes Sayre Sr.; and Eleanor Randolph Wilson, who married William Gibbs McAdoo. In December 1915 Wilson married Edith Bolling Galt, whose partnership with him became indispensable during his final years in office. Friends and advisers such as Edward M. House and Joseph Tumulty were central to his political life, though House's influence waned after Paris.

Final Years and Legacy
Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1919 for his work toward the League of Nations, Wilson left office in March 1921 physically diminished but intellectually unbowed. He remained in Washington, D.C., writing essays, receiving visitors, and defending his vision of collective security and American leadership. He died on February 3, 1924, and was interred at Washington National Cathedral, the only U.S. president buried in the nation's capital. His career bridged the progressive transformation of American governance and the emergence of the United States as a global power. Remembered for banking reform, antitrust laws, labor protections, and support for women's suffrage, he is also judged for civil liberties repression during wartime and for policies that entrenched racial segregation. His clash with Henry Cabot Lodge over the League of Nations reshaped American foreign policy debates for a generation, even as later leaders revisited his internationalist ideals in new institutions. The people around him, family, confidants like House and Tumulty, cabinet officers including McAdoo, Lansing, Baker, and Daniels, critics such as Theodore Roosevelt and Lodge, and foreign counterparts Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando, collectively framed the achievements and limits of a presidency that defined an era.

Our collection contains 63 quotes who is written by Woodrow, under the main topics: Witty One-Liners - Ethics & Morality - Wisdom - Justice - Friendship.

Other people realated to Woodrow: Herbert Hoover (President), Alice Paul (Activist), Louis D. Brandeis (Judge), David Lloyd George (Statesman), Ferdinand Foch (Soldier), Walter Lippmann (Journalist), Samuel Gompers (Activist), Eugene V. Debs (Politician), Mary Harris Jones (Activist), Josephus Daniels (Politician)