William Howard Taft Quotes

I am president now, and tired of being kicked around.

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

I know how irritating it is to have somebody else lay down rules for your moral uplift, but you've got to stand a great deal in order to make progress.

Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that today is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.

Action for which I become responsible, or for which my administration becomes responsible, shall be within the law.

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

The game of baseball is a clean, straight game, and it summons to its presence everybody who enjoys clean, straight athletics. It furnishes amusement to the thousands and thousands.

We, as Unitarians, may feel that the world is coming our way.

The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to the modern idea of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets.

He (William Howard Taft) had little patience with the unconscious arrogance of conscious wealth and financial success.

People will love him (Theodore Roosevelt) for the enemies he has made.

We have a government of limited power under the Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law.

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.

We are all dependent upon the investment of capital.

Politics make me sick

A man never knows exactly how the child of his brain will strike other people.

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.

I am glad to be going. This is the lonesomest pace in the world?

The game of baseball is a clean, straight game.

What I am anxious to do is to secure my legislation.... What I want to do is to get through that, and if I can point to a record of usefulness of that kind, I am entirely willing to quit office.

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.

There are a great many people who are in favor of conservation no matter what it means.

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.

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

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

Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick.

One cannot always be sure of the truth of what one hears if he happens to be President of the United States.

I don't know the man I admire more than [Charles Evans] Hughes. If ever I have the chance I shall offer him the Chief Justiceship.

When the history of this period is written, [William Jennings] Bryan will stand out as one of the most remarkable men of his generation and one of the biggest political men of our country.

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.

If he (Teddy Roosevelt) lacked Will Taft's immediate charisma, gradually his classmates could not resist the spell of his highly original personality.

I read them (articles TR wrote on his honeymoon) all over to Edith and her corrections and help were most valuable to me.

One journalist complemented another that his article on a dispute, "had made both sides see themselves as they are.

Of Teddy Roosevelt and his siblings, the author writes they were, "armed with an innate curiosity and discipline fostered by his remarkable father.

She was never satisfied with anything less than perfection, but she was no grind. She was too interested in people.

The Yale graduate who had refused to read outside the course curriculum (the future Pres. Taft) suddenly found himself inspired.

Theodore Roosevelt's father wrote him, "I fear for your future. We cannot stand so corrupt a government for any great length of time.

(Theodore) Roosevelt confessed early fascination with "girls'stories" such as Little Man and Little Women and An Old-Fashioned Girl.

Edith (the future Mrs. Teddy Roosevelt) developed a lifelong devotion to drama and poetry. "I have gone back to Shakespeare, as I always do, " she would write seven decades later.

As ever, books remained a medium through which Theodore and Edith connected and interpreted larger world.

According to his habit, Theodore Roosevelt sought to harness anxiety through action.

Politics makes me sick.

Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man.