Explore Quotes by William Howard Taft

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

I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists to town.

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

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

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.

I do not know much about politics, but I am trying to do the best I can with this administration until the time shall come for me to turn it over to somebody else.

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

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.

I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me.

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

As the Republican platforms says, the welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country.

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

I think his greatest fault is his failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done. This is a great weakness in any man.

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.

A system in which we may have an enforced rest from legislation for two years is not bad.

If this humor be the safety of our race, then it is due largely to the infusion into the American people of the Irish brain.

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

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

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.

Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.

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