William Howard Taft Quotes

I'll be damned if I am not getting tired of this. It seems to be the profession of a President simply to hear other people talk.

It is one of the deepest wounds that I have had as an American and a lover of the Constitution and a believer in progressive conservatism, that such a man as Brandeis could be put on the Court.

The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.

The truth is that in my present life I don’t remember that I ever was president.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgement.

A National Government cannot create good times. It cannot make the rain to fall, the sun to shine, or the crops to grow, but it can, by pursuing a meddlesome policy, attempting to change economic conditions, and frightening the investment of capital, prevent a prosperity and a revival of business which might otherwise have taken place.

Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken with out developing new evils requiring new remedies.

We live in a stage of politics, where legislators seem to regard the passage of laws as much more important than the results of their enforcement.

I am going to do what I think is best for the country, within my jurisdiction and power, and then let the rest take care of itself.

If they will play fair I will play fair, but if they won't then I reserve all my rights to do anything I find myself able to do.

The world is not going to be saved by legislation.

Some men are graduated from college cum laude, some are graduated summa cum laude, and some are graduated mirabile dictu.

Unless education promotes character making, unless it helps men to be more moral, more just to their fellows, more law abiding, more discriminatingly patriotic and public spirited, it is not worth the trouble taken to furnish it.

Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.

If I run as the regular Republican nominee, I may go down to defeat if a bolt is started by Roosevelt, but I will retain the regular organization of the party as a nucleus about which the conservative people who are in favor of maintaining constitutional government can gather, both from the Democratic and Republican parties, and we will have two radicals and one conservative.