America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other • Now you may differ with me in judgement. It is going to take generations to work this thing out. And mark these pages, it will come quickest if these questions aren’t raised. Now, I am perfectly willing to anything that is just. I am not willing to do what may turn out to be unwise • An unwillingness even to discuss these matters produces only dissatisfaction and gives comfort to the extreme elements in our country which endeavor to stir up disturbances in order to provoke governments to embark upon a course of retaliation and repression • The process is intended to be one of reading, comparing, reflecting; not cramming, but daily methodical study. It is our confident hope that such changes will bring about very gratifying results: that the undergraduate will take more pleasure in his studies, derive more profit and stimulation from them, and that the instructor will find vital intercourse with his pupils give place to dull routine • No one who has observed the march of events in the last year can fail to note the absolute need of a definite programme to bring about -- an improvement in the conditions of labor • Let bankers explain the technical features of the new system. Suffice is here to say that it provides a currency which expands as it is needed and contracts when it is not needed • Now, what has been the matter? The matter has been that the government of this country was privately controlled and that the business of this country was privately controlled; that we did not have genuine representative government and that the people of this country did not have the control of their own affairs. I mean to put it specifically that the government of this country was managed by politicians who gained the contributions which they used by solicitation from particular groups of business interests, on the understanding, explicit or implied, that the first care of the government was to be for those particular interests • The subject matter of their studies is not to be the lectures of their professors or the handful of text-books, but the reading which they should do for themselves in order to get a real first-hand command of the leading ideas, principles and processes of the subjects which they are studying • What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice,—no mere peace of shreds and patches • The business of government is to see that no other organization is as strong as itself; to see that no body or group of men, no matter what their private interest is, may come into competition with the authority of society • We can never turn back from a course chosen upon principle. We believe that our own desire for a new international order under which reason and justice and the common interests of mankind shall prevail is the desire of enlightened men everywhere. Without that new order the world will be without peace and human life will lack tolerable conditions of existence and development • It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and -- safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. National aspirations must be respected; peoples may not be dominated and governed only by their own consent • ‘Self-determination’ is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action • It is not learning but the spirit of service that will give a college a place in the public annals of our nation • There is only one way, gentlemen, in which the relations of capital and labor can be made satisfactory—that is, by, in the first place, regarding labor as a human relationship of men with men. It is plain that our laws with regard to the employer and employee are in many respects wholly antiquated and impossible. New rules must be devised with regard to employees’ obligations and their rights, their obligations to their employers and their responsibilities to one another. New rules must be devised for their protection, for their compensation when injured, for their support when disabled • The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty • There is more of a nation’s politics to be gotten out of its poetry than out of all its systemic writers upon public affairs and constitutions • Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game • It has never been natural, it has seldom been possible, in this country for learning to seek a place apart and hold aloof from affairs. The college in our day lives very near indeed to the affair of the world • I have every confidence that the great majority of the newspapers of the country will observe a patriotic reticence about everything publication could be of injury, but in every other country there are some persons in a position to do mischief in this field who cannot be relied upon and whose interests or desires will lead to actions • Mexico’s fortunes are in her own hands. But we have at least proved that we will not take advantage of her in her distress and undertake to impose upon her an order and government of our own choosing • It moves her sons very deeply to find Princeton to have been from the first what they know her to have been in their own day: a school of duty • A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike • Literature is the door to nature and to ourselves. It opens our hearts to receive the experiences of great men and the conceptions of great races. Even though it puzzle or altogether escape the scientific method, literature may keep our horizon clear for us, and our eyes glad to look bravely forth among the world • It is not knowledge that moved the world, but ideals, convictions, the opinions or fancies that have been held or followed; and whoever studies humanity ought to study it alive, practice the vivisection of reading literature • It has been Princeton’s work, in all ordinary seasons, not to change but to strengthen society, to give, not yeast, but bread for the raising • The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty • We must not pit power against weakness. We must have a workingman’s compensation act which will not put upon him the burden of fighting powerful composite employers to obtain his rights, but which will give him his rights without suit, directly, and without contest, by automatic operation of the law • Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give,—service and sacrifice of every kind,—and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? • Monopolies are built up by unfair methods of competition, and the new Trade Commission has power to forbid and prevent unfair competition, whether upon a big scale or upon a little, whether just begun or grown old and formidable • There were some things which the government can do and private management cannot. Such governments represent always a stage of social development: the stage at which the people governed are conscious of no community of interest, no possible concert of action amongst them; do not feel themselves a single body or stir with any common purpose • There is an uneasy feeling throughout the State, in which, I dare say, we all share, that there are glaring inequalities in our system—or, at any rate, in our practice—of taxation • The University in our day is no longer inclined to stand aloof from the practical world, and, surely, it ought never have had the disposition to do so. It is plain that it is the duty of an institution of learning set in the midst of a free population and amidst signs of social change, not merely to implant a sense of duty, but to illuminate duty by every lesson that can be drawn out of the past • 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 • Any minority looks as if it were discriminated against. But suppose Negroes were the majority in the departments in the clerkships and this segregation occurred? Then it would look like discrimination against the whites, because it is always the minority that looks discriminated against, whereas the discrimination may not be intended against anyone, but for the benefit of both • Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing settled by military force, if settled wrong, is settled at all • Labor is not a commodity. It is a form of cooperation • America has never yet had a season of leisured quiet in which students could seek a life apart without the sharp rigours of conscience, or college instructors easily forget that they were training citizens as well as drilling pupils • Are we alone to ask and take the utmost that our women can give,—service and sacrifice of every kind,—and still say we do not see what title that gives them to stand by our sides in the guidance of the affairs of their nation and ours? • The power of the United States is a menace to no nation or people. It will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out of freedom and is for the service of freedom • College instructors have long observed that their teaching is rendered more effective by dividing large classes into small sections and making each section small enough to enable them to get frequently at each member of the class • There is only one way, gentlemen, in which the relations of capital and labor can be made satisfactory—that is, by, in the first place, regarding labor as a human relationship of men with men • Haiti gives me a good deal of concern • Action is evidently necessary and no doubt it would be a mistake to postpone it long. I suppose there is nothing for it but to take the bull by the horns and restore order. This will probably involve making the Port au Prince City authorities virtually subordinate to our commanders. They may hand the city government over to us voluntarily. It is not learning but the spirit of service that will give a college a place in the public annals of our nation • I think I have never known of a man more impossible to deal with on human principles than this man Carranza • Now you may differ with me in judgement. It is going to take generations to work this thing out. And mark these pages, it will come quickest if these questions aren’t raised • Government does not stop with the protection of life, liberty, and property, as some have suggested; it goes on to serve every convenience of society • I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good men • No student knows his subject: the most he knows is where and how to find out the things he does not know with regard to it • This war could not have be fought if it had not been for the services of women. The tasks of the women lie at the very heart of the war, and I know how much stronger that heart will beat if you do this just thing and show our women that you trust them as much as you in fact and of necessity depend on them. Without their counsellings we shall be only half wise • No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation • The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant Negroes. In May 1866, a little group of young men formed a secret club for the mere pleasure of association, the comrades rode abroad at night, the figures of man and horse sheeted like a ghost. It threw the Negroes into a very ecstasy of panic to see these sheeted "Ku Klux". Every country-side wished to have its own Ku Klux until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan to protect the southern country • We have been dreading all along the time when the combined power of high finance would be greater than the government. It is our purpose to destroy monopoly and maintain competition as the only efficient instrument of business liberty • The ear of the leader must ring with the voices of the people • If the colored people made a mistake in voting for me, they ought to correct it • There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life • Segregation of white and Negro civil service employees in government departments, a system inaugurated during the present Administration, is to be continued • Now, I think I am perfectly safe in stating that the American people, as a whole, sincerely desire and wish to support, in every way they can, the advancement of the Negro race in America. But we are all practical men. We know that there is a point at which there is apt to be friction, and that is in the intercourse between the two races. It works both ways. A white man can make a colored man uncomfortable, and a colored man can make a white man uncomfortable if there is a prejudice existing between them. And it shouldn’t be allowed at either end • I don’t think its degradation. That is your interpretation of it • Mexico was in a most unhappy and impossible state and hasn’t got thoroughly out of it yet, but that is none of our business • Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out • An evident principle runs through the whole programme I have outlined • The women of America are too noble and too intelligent and too devoted to be slackers whether you give or withhold this thing that is mere justice; but I know the magic will work in their thoughts and spirits if you give it them • Now you may differ with me in judgment. It is going to take generations to work this thing out. And mark these pages, it will come quickest if these questions aren’t raised • The nation which is most likely to linger is the caste nation unless some irresistible force from without break it, as the force of western nations has so ruthlessly broken the ancient forms of Chinese life. In taking this step I entertain the confident hope and expectation that the Chinese nation will attain to the highest degree of development and well-being • Literature has a quality to move you, and you can never mistake it, if you have any blood in you. And it has a power to instruct you which is as effective as it is subtle, and which no research or systematic method can ever rival.

—Woodrow Wilson
13th President of Princeton University, 1902–1910
34th Governor of New Jersey, 1911–1913
28th President of the United States, 1913–1921