William Howard Taft Quotes

Too many people don't care what happens so long as it doesn't happen to them.

We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.

We can't have a decent government unless those in power exercise self restraint.

Repeat mantra: Donuts are not vitamins, donuts are not.

No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.

I don't know whither we are drifting, but I do know where every real thinking patriot will stand in the end, and that's by the Constitution.

The world is not going to be saved by legislation.

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 cheerful loser is a sort of winner.

The man with the average mentality, but with control, with a definite goal, and a clear conception of how it can be gained, and above all, with the power of application and labor, wins in the end.

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.

We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.

The secret of Masonry, like the secret of life, can be known only by those who seek it, serve it, live it. It cannot be uttered; it can only be felt and acted. It is, in fact, an open secret, and each man knows it according to his quest and capacity. Like all things worth knowing, no one can know it for another and no man can know it alone.

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.

The President can exercise no power which cannot be fairly and reasonably traced to some specific grant of power in the Federal Constitution or in an act of Congress passed in pursuance thereof. There is no undefined residuum of power which he can exercise because it seems to him to be in the public interest.

The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much.

A government is for the benefit of all the people.

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken without developing new evils requiring new remedies.

Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution . .

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

Well, I have one consolation. No candidate was ever elected ex-president by such a large majority!

Lawyers are necessary in a community. Some of you...take a different view; but as I am a member of that legal profession, or was at one time, and have only lost standing in it to become a politician, I still retain the pride of the profession. And I still insist that it is the law and the lawyer that make popular government under a written constitution and written statutes possible.