Loyalty means nothing unless it has at its heart the absolute principle of self-sacrifice.
Woodrow WilsonRead
No one who has read official documents needs to be told how easy it is to conceal the essential truth under the apparently candid and all- disclosing phrases of a voluminous and particularizing report.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Official documents can obscure truth despite their detail.
This quote by Woodrow Wilson suggests that even though official documents may appear transparent and comprehensive, they often disguise the core truth within complex and specific language. It reflects the idea that clarity can sometimes mask deception, and that one must be discerning when interpreting seemingly straightforward information.
Themes
TruthOfficial DocumentsDeceptionCommunicationTransparency
In practice
Example use cases
During a presentation on government transparency, this quote highlights the need for critical analysis of official reports.
More from Woodrow Wilson
All quotes →Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.
Woodrow WilsonRead
The history of liberty is the history of limitations on the power of government, not the increase of it. When we resist, therefore, the concentration of power, we are resisting the processes of death, because concentration of power is what always precedes the destruction of human liberties.
Woodrow WilsonRead
We grow great by dreams. All big men are dreamers.
Woodrow WilsonRead
The way to stop financial joyriding is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.
Woodrow WilsonRead
Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.
Woodrow WilsonRead
Similar quotes
I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.
Henri BergsonRead
Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.
Thomas JeffersonRead
I wondered whether I could find a Great Perhaps here at all or whether I had made a grand miscalculation.
John GreenRead
What problem does Pan-Asianism attempt to solve? The problem is how to terminate the sufferings of the Asiatic peoples and how to resist the aggression of the powerful European countries. In a word, Pan-Asianism represents the cause of the oppressed Asiatic peoples.
Sun Yat-SenRead
The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.
William Ellery ChanningRead
Non-violence ... is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy.
Mahatma GandhiRead