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William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States (1909–1913) and 10th Chief Justice of the United States (1921–1930). He also served as an associate judge on the Sixth Circuit, Governor-General of the Philippines, Secretary of War to Theodore Roosevelt and Solicitor General. Between 1914 and 1920 he was the Kent Professor of Law at Yale University.

Sourced

  • I am a Unitarian. I believe in God. I do not believe in the divinity of Christ, and there are many postulates of the orthodox creed to which I cannot subscribe.
    • Letter to Yale University (1899), quoted in Henry F. Pringle, William Howard Taft: The Life and Times, vol. 1, p. 45 (1939)



  • We are all imperfect. We can not expect perfect government.
    • Address at a banquet given by the Board of Trade and Chamber of Commerce of Washington, D.C., May 8, 1909.; found in Presidential Addresses and State Papers of William Howard Taft, vol. 1, chapter 7, p. 82 (1910)

  • 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.
    • Letter of Archibald Butt to Clara F. Butt (1909-06-01); reprinted in The Intimate Letters of Archie Butt (Doubleday, Doran, & Co., 1930)

  • I am in favor of helping the prosperity of all countries because, when we are all prosperous, the trade of each becomes more valuable to the other.
    • Address at the Hotel Fairmont in San Francisco (6 October 1909)

  • One of the marvelous things about him is that he is strong enough to force the men who dislike him the most to stand by him. By far he is the strongest man before the people to-day except Roosevelt. 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. I think it was one of the strongest things about Roosevelt. He never tried to minimize what other people did and often exaggerated it.
    • On Charles Evans Hughes, in November 1909, as quoted in Taft and Roosevelt : The intimate letters of Archie Butt (1930) by Archibald Willingham Butt, p. 224; this has sometimes been paraphrased: "Failure to accord credit to anyone for what he may have done is a great weakness in any man."

  • 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.
    • Address in Pocatello, Idaho (5 October 1911)

  • 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.
    • Speech to the Lotus Club (16 November 1912)

  • 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.
  • "State of the Union" (3 December 1912)

  • 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.
    • Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils, chapter 3 (1913)

  • Socialism proposes no adequate substitute for the motive of enlightened selfishness that to-day is at the basis of all human labor and effort, enterprise and new activity.
    • Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils, chapter 3 (1913)

  • 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.
    • Speech to the Young Men's Hebrew Association in New York (20 December 1914)

  • The world is not going to be saved by legislation.
    • Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers, chapter 6 (1916)

  • 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.
    • Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers, chapter 6 (1916)

  • 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.
    • Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (1916)

  • Substantial progress toward better things can rarely be taken with out developing new evils requiring new remedies.
    • Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (Columbia University Press 1916), p. 61

  • The President cannot make clouds to rain and cannot make the corn to grow, he cannot make business good; although when these things occur, political parties do claim some credit for the good things that have happened in this way.
    • Our Chief Magistrate and His Powers (1916)

  • Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.
    • "Anti-Semitism in the United States", address to the Anti Defamation League in Chicago, Illinois (1920-12-23)

  • 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.
    • "Adequate Machinery for Judicial Business," Journal of the American Bar Association, vol. 7, p. 454 (September 1921)

  • The truth is that in my present life I don’t remember that I ever was president.
    • Correspondence (1925), quoted in James Chace (2004), 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs

Attributed

  • Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick.
    • Quoted in Archibald W. Butt (1930), Taft and Roosevelt

  • 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.
    • Quoted in Archibald W. Butt (1930), Taft and Roosevelt

  • Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents - but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.
    • Quoted in Henry Pringle (1939), The Life and Times of William Howard Taft

  • The publishers profess to be the agents of heaven in establishing virtue and therefore that they ought to receive some subsidy from the government. I can ask no stronger refutation to this claim … than the utterly unscrupulous methods pursued by them in seeking to influence Congress on this subject.
    • Quoted in Henry Fowles Pringle (1939), The Life and Times of William Howard Taft, referring to a postal rate increase affecting popular magazines

  • Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.
    • Quoted in Henry Fowles Pringle (1939), The Life and Times of William Howard Taft

  • Enthusiasm for a cause sometimes warps judgment.
    • Quoted in David G. Plotkin (1955), Dictionary of American Maxims

  • Some men are graduated from college cum laude, some are graduated summa cum laude, and some are graduated mirabile dictu.
    • Quoted in David G. Plotkin (1955), Dictionary of American Maxims; the last phrase translates roughly as "It's a miracle."

  • No tendency is quite so strong in human nature as the desire to lay down rules of conduct for other people.
    • Quoted in Robert J. Schoenberg (1992), Mr. Capone, apparently referring to the temperance movement
 
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