William Howard Taft

A government is for the benefit of all the people.
~ William Howard Taft, Veto of the Arizona Enabling Act (22 August 1911)

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

Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.
~ William Howard Taft, Speech (1920)

As a people, we have the problem of making our forests outlast this generation, or iron outlast this century, and our coal the next; not merely as a matter of convenience or comfort, but as a matter of stern necessity.
~ William Howard Taft, in John Withers (unpublished dissertation, University of Chicago, 1956). The Administrative Practices of William Howard Taft

As the Republican platforms says, the welfare of the farmer is vital to that of the whole country.
~ William Howard Taft, Speech on the importance of a healthy agriculture (1908)

Don't sit up nights thinking about making me president for that will never come and I have no ambition in that direction. Any party which would nominate me would make a great mistake.
~ William Howard Taft, (1903).

Don't write so that you can be understood, write so that you can't be misunderstood.
~ William Howard Taft

[George] Washington intended this to be a Federal city, and it is a Federal city, and it tingles down to the feet of every man, whether he comes from Washington State, or Los Angeles, or Texas, when he comes and walks these city streets and begins to feel that this is my city; I own a part of this Capital, and I envy for the time being those who are able to spend their time here. I quite admit that there are defects in the system of government by which Congress is bound to look after the government of the District of Columbia. It could not be otherwise under such a system, but I submit to the judgment of history that the result vindicates the foresight of the fathers.
~ William Howard Taft, Address to the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C. (8 May 1909).

I am afraid I am a constant disappointment to my party. The fact of the matter is, the longer I am president the less of a party man I seem to become.
~ William Howard Taft

I am delighted to learn that the dastardly attack was unsuccessful. The resort to violence is out of place in our 20th century civilization.
~ William Howard Taft (on the attempt to assassinate Theodore Roosevelt).

I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade with each becomes more valuable to the other.
~ William Howard Taft, Address at Hotel Fairmont, San Francisco CA (5 October 1909)

I am president now, and tired of being kicked around.
~ William Howard Taft

I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many other of the postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.
~ William Howard Taft, Letter to Yale University

I don't remember that I ever was President.
~ William Howard Taft, (Towards his death when he served as chief justice of the United States)

I feel certain that he would not recognize a generous impulse if he met it on the street.
~ William Howard Taft (on Woodrow Wilson).

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.
~ William Howard Taft

I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the president is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and bring tourists into the town.
~ William Howard Taft

I hate to use the patronage as a club unless I have to.
~ William Howard Taft

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.
~ William Howard Taft

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.
~ William Howard Taft, (5 August 1908).

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.
~ William Howard Taft, Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils (1913). Chapter 7

It is important, of course, that controversies be settled right, but there are many civil questions which arise between individuals in which it is not so important the controversy be settled one way or another as that it be settled. Of course a settlement of a controversy on a fundamentally wrong principle of law is greatly to be deplored, but there must of necessity be many rules governing the relations between members of the same society that are more important in that their establishment creates a known rule of action than that they proceed on one principle or another. Delay works always for the man with the longest purse.
~ William Howard Taft (address to the American Bar Association, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 30, 1921), in American Bar Association Journal (September 1921). Adequate Machinery for Judicial Business

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.
~ William Howard Taft, Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils (1913). Chapter 3

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

Nobody ever drops in for the evening.
~ William Howard Taft

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

. . . one of the most uncomfortable four months of my life.
~ William Howard Taft (referring to his 1908 presidential campaign).

Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick.
~ William Howard Taft

Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.
~ William Howard Taft

Presidents may go to the seashore or to the mountains. Cabinet officers may go about the country explaining how fortunate the country is in having such an administration, but the machinery at Washington continues to operate under the army of faithful non-commissioned officers, and the great mass of governmental business is uninterrupted.
~ William Howard Taft

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.
~ William Howard Taft, Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils (1913).

Some men are graduated from college cum laude, some are graduated summa cum laude, and some are graduated mirabile dictu.
~ William Howard Taft

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

The cheerful loser is a sort of winner.
~ William Howard Taft

The constitutional purpose of a budget is to make government responsive to public opinion and responsible for its acts.
~ William Howard Taft, Message to Congress (December 1909).

The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims.
~ William Howard Taft, Message of the President to Congress (3 December 1912).

[T]he enthusiasm of the cause may sometimes warp judgment.
~ William Howard Taft, Speech at Ocean Grove Auditorium, NJ (15 August 1911).

The great trouble has been that we have not given the women a fair show. We have not opened all the avenues to livelihood which they are quite as well able to fill, and in certain respects better able to fill, than we are.
~ William Howard Taft, Address to the Students of the State Institute and College at Columbus, Mississippi (2 November 1909).

The intoxication of power rapidly sobers off in the knowledge of its restrictions and under the prompt reminder of an ever-present and not always considerate press, as well as the kindly suggestions that not infrequently come from Congress.
~ William Howard Taft

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.
~ William Howard Taft, Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (1916). Chapter 6

The trouble with me is that I like to talk too much.
~ William Howard Taft

The world is not going to be saved by legislation.
~ William Howard Taft, The President and His Powers (1916)

There is nothing so despicable as a secret society that is based upon religious prejudice and that will attempt to defeat a man because of his religious beliefs. Such a society is like a cockroach -- it thrives in the dark. So do those who combine for such an end.
~ William Howard Taft, Address (20 December 1914)

There is only one thing I want to say about Ohio that has a political tinge, and that is that I think a mistake has been made of recent years in Ohio in failing to continue as our representatives the same people term after term. I do not need to tell a Washington audience, among whom there are certainly some who have been interested in legislation, that length of service in the House and in the Senate is what gives influence.
~ William Howard Taft, Quoted in the Congressional Record (23 May 1916). Speech before the Ohio Society, Washington, D.C.

We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.
~ William Howard Taft, Address to the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce, Washington, D.C. (8 May 1909).

We, as Unitarians, may feel that the world is coming our way.
~ William Howard Taft

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.
~ William Howard Taft, The President and His Powers (1916)