Quotes

[when asked by Connecticut Senator Frank Brandegee how he liked being President] Frank, it is hell! No other word can describe it.

America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not submergence in internationality, but sustainment in triumphant nationality. [Speech in Boston, May 1920]

Progressivism is not proclamation or palaver. It is not pretense nor play on prejudice. It is not of personal pronouns, nor perennial pronouncement. It is not the perturbation of a people passion-wrought, nor a promised proposed. [Placing President William Howard Taft's name in nomination at the 1912 Republican National Convention]

[to noted editor William Allen White] My God, this is a hell of a job! I have no trouble with my enemies, I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends, my God-damn friends... they're the ones that keep me walking the floor nights!

[to White House aide Judson Welliver] Jud, you have a college education, haven't you? I don't know what to do or where to turn in this taxation matter. Somewhere there must be a book that tells all about it, where I could go to straighten it out in my mind. But I don't know where the book is, and maybe I couldn't read it if I found it! There must be a man in the country somewhere who could weigh both sides and know the truth. Probably he is in some college or other. But I don't know where to find him. I don't know who he is, and I don't know how to get him. My God, this is a hell of a place for a man like me to be!