Woodrow Wilson

Let us be perfectly frank with ourselves and admit that these questions cannot be satisfactorily answered now or at once.

To conquer with arms is to make only a temporary conquest; to conquer the world by earning its esteem is to make permanent conquest.

Hunger does not breed reform; it breeds madness and all the ugly distempers that make an ordered life impossible.

The arbitrary power of the military caste of Germany which once could secretly and of its own single choice disturb the peace of the world is discredited and destroyed.

They will find that every pathway that is stained with the blood of their own brothers leads to the wilderness, not to the seat of their hope.

The war thus comes to an end; for, having accepted these terms of armistice, it will be impossible for the German command to renew it.

If they do not, we must await with patience and sympathy the awakening and recovery that will assuredly come at last.

We must hold the light steady until they find themselves.

Armed imperialism such as the men conceived who were but yesterday the masters of Germany is at an end, its illicit ambitions engulfed in black disaster.

No scruple of taste must in grim times like these be allowed to stand in the way of speaking the plain truth.

If in these critical days it is your wish to sustain me with undivided minds, I beg that you will say so in a way which it will not be possible to misunderstand either here at home or among our associates on the other side of the sea.

If you have approved of my leadership and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will express yourself unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority…

I need not tell you, my fellow countrymen, that I am asking your support not for my own sake or for the sake of a political party, but for the sake of the nation itself, in order that its inward unity of purpose may be evident to all the…

Unity of command is as necessary now in civil action as it is upon the field of battle.

I submit my difficulties and my hopes to you.

I am your servant and will accept your judgment without cavil, but my power to administer the great trust assigned me by the Constitution would be seriously impaired should your judgment be adverse, and I must frankly tell you so because…

I have no thought of suggesting that any political party is paramount in matters of patriotism.

The return of a Republican majority to either House of the Congress would, moreover, certainly be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership.

It is my duty to win the war and to ask you to remove every obstacle that stands in the way of winning it.

That judgment I take the liberty of urging upon you with solemn earnestness for reasons which I shall state very frankly and which I shall hope will seem as conclusive to you as they seem to me.

We cannot isolate our thought or our action in such a matter from the thought of the rest of the world.

I had assumed that the Senate would concur in the amendment because no disputable principle is involved but only a question of the method by which the suffrage is to be extended to women.

We shall not only be distrusted but shall deserve to be distrusted if we do not enfranchise them with the fullest possible enfranchisement, as it is now certain that the other great free nations will enfranchise them.

I tell you plainly that this measure which I urge upon you is vital to the winning of the war and to the energies alike of preparation and of battle.

I regard the concurrence of the Senate in the constitutional amendment proposing the extension of the suffrage to women as vitally essential to the successful prosecution of the great war of humanity in which we are engaged.