William Howard Taft Quotes
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I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interests.... I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times.... Of course, when organized labor permits itself to sympathize with violent methods or undue duress, it is not entitled to our sympathy.
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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.
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The precepts of the Gospel were universally the obligations of Masonry.
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It is fitting that the Government of the United States should assume the obligation of the establishment and maintenance of a first-class university for the education of colored menand I wish to put in this caveatthat the colored race today, all of them, would be better off if they all had university education.... Of course, the basis of education of the colored people is in the primary schools and in industrial schools.... In those schools must be introduced teachers from such university institutions as this.
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We passed the Children's Bureau bill calculated to prevent children from being employed too early in factories.
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He [Roosevelt] has made some speeches that indicate that he is going quite beyond anything that he advocated when he was in the White House, and has proposed a program which is absolutely impossible to carry out except by a revision of the Constitution.
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I love judges, and I love courts. They are my ideals, that typify on earth what we shall meet hereafter in heaven under a just God.
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On the whole, yes, I would rather be the Chief Justice of the United States, and a quieter life than that which becomes at the White House is more in keeping with the temperament, but when taken into consideration that I go into history as President, and my children and my children's children are the better placed on account of that fact, I am inclined to think that to be President well compensates one for all the trials and criticisms he has to bear and undergo.
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People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.
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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.
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We must dare to be great; and we must realize that greatness is the fruit of toil and sacrifice and high courage.
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One cannot always be sure of the truth of what one hears if he happens to be President of the United States.
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No, the only things which do not bother me are the elements. I can overcome them without a fight. All one has to do to get the best of the elements is to stand pat and one will win.
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Next to the right of liberty, the right of property is the most important individual right guaranteed by the Constitution and the one which, united with that of personal liberty, has contributed more to the growth of civilization than any other institution established by the human race.
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The true Mason does not hold or teach the attitude that, I am a Master Mason now and thus I no longer need to be concerned with using the working tools because they were given in the earlier degrees.
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Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice.
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Roosevelt could always keep ahead with his work, but I cannot do it, and I know it is a grievous fault, but it is too late to remedy it. The country must take me as it found me. Wasn't it your mother who had a servant girl who said it was no use for her to try to hurry, that she was a "Sunday chil" and no "Sunday chil" could hurry? I don't think I am a Sunday child, but I ought to have been; then I would have had an excuse for always being late.
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In the public interest, therefore, it is better that we lose the services of the exceptions who are good Judges after they are seventy and avoid the presence on the Bench of men who are not able to keep up with the work, or to perform it satisfactorily.
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We shall have to begin all over again. [Taft hoped that] the Senators might change their minds, or that the people might change the Senate; instead of which they changed me.
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The judiciary has fallen to a very low state in this country. I think your part of the country has suffered especially. The federal judges of the South are a disgrace to any country, and I'll be damned if I put any man on the bench of whose character and ability there is the least doubt.
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Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the office.
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The laboring man and the trade-unionist, if I understand him, asks only equality before the law. Class legislation and unequal privilege, though expressly in his favor, will in the end work no benefit to him or to society.
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A government is for the benefit of all the people.
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We have passed the time of ... the laisser-faire [sic] school which believes that the government ought to do nothing but run a police force.