William Howard Taft
Quotations

"He ought more often to have admitted the legal way of reaching the same ends."

- About T Roosevelt

 

"Politics, when I am in it, makes me sick."

- Letter to wife

 

"I am older and slower and less acute and more confused. However, as long as things continue as they are, and I am able to answer in my place, I must stay on the court in order to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control."

- Letter to his brother in 1929 regarding holding his place on the Supreme Court

 

"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."

 

"One of the most uncomfortable four months of my life."

- On campaigning for president in 1908

 

"I don't remember that I ever was President."

- On what he considered his greatest honour - the appointment to Chief Justice

 

" 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. "

- In a letter declining the presidency of Yale University