George McGovern Quotes & Sayings

This dogged, same track approach (by the NCI) is even more astonishing ... — George McGovern

Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public. — George McGovern

My heart does sometimes bleed for those who are hurting in my own country and abroad. — George McGovern

There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war. — George McGovern

Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.' — George McGovern

I met my wife in South Dakota. — George McGovern

Don't throw away your conscience. — George McGovern

For 50 years, the Republicans have been accusing the Democrats of being soft on national security. — George McGovern

You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing. — George McGovern

I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government. — George McGovern

I have a very deep concern about President Obama putting in another 21,000 troops into Afghanistan with the promise of more to come. — George McGovern

We have the resources (to end hunger), we know what has to be done, and it's something that can be achieved at a rather modest cost — George McGovern

The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security. — George McGovern

If Reagan wins, I'd sell the farm and buy a bomb shelter. — George McGovern

We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it ... I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come. — George McGovern

It can take greater courage to stand in opposition to the views of your neighbors or nation than to confront an enemy in combat. — George McGovern

I'm constantly meeting people who said that they cast their first vote for me, or that they cut their eye teeth on the 1972 campaign, or that they didn't vote for me but admire my positions. — George McGovern

To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina. — George McGovern

When people ask if the United States can afford to place on trial the president, if the system can stand impeachment, my answer is, Can we stand anything else? — George McGovern

So, I think that's the centerpiece of morality: Don't lie. But to do that, you have to go a step further and find out what the truth is. — George McGovern

I have to have a passion in my life. — George McGovern

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it. — George McGovern

Above all, being a Democrat means having compassion for others ... It means standing up for people who have been kept down ... — George McGovern

The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else. — George McGovern

I didn't used to care about living a long time. Not that I wasn't enjoying life, but I never sat around asking how I'd get to be 100, you know. But now I want to live long enough to see every school child in the world getting a good, nutritious lunch every day. — George McGovern

The Establishment center ... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster - a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation. — George McGovern

It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil, ... that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure. — George McGovern

I always thought of myself as a moderate liberal, a fighter for peace and justice. I never thought of myself as being all that far out. — George McGovern

I make one pledge above all others - to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command. — George McGovern

I did frequently refer to my war record in World War II, but not in any flamboyant way. — George McGovern

I flew a full string of 35 combat missions over some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe. We were hitting Hitler's oil refineries, his tank factories, his aircraft factories, his railway yards. Those were our prime targets. — George McGovern

I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise. — George McGovern

Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics. — George McGovern

I hope someday we will be able to proclaim that we have banished hunger in the United States, and that we've been able to bring nutrition and health to the whole world. — George McGovern

I didn't know a damned thing about mental illness and neither did anyone around me. — George McGovern

I firmly believed throughout 1971 that the major hurdle to winning the presidency was winning the Democratic nomination. I believed that any reasonable Democrat would defeat President Nixon. I now think that no one could have defeated him in 1972. — George McGovern

I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society. — George McGovern

You don't run for the presidency out of nostalgia. — George McGovern

Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections. — George McGovern

I've enjoyed myself 90 percent of the time. — George McGovern

Come home to the affirmation that we have a dream. Come home to the conviction that we can move our country forward. Come home to the belief that we can seek a newer world. And let us be joyful in the homecoming ... — George McGovern

I still love to go back to Mitchell [his home town] and wander up and down those streets. It just kind of reassures me again that there is a place that I know thoroughly, where the roots are deep. Everything had a place, a specific definition. — George McGovern

The whole campaign was a tragic case of mistaken identity. — George McGovern

I never even had the time to read novels. — George McGovern

Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother's keeper ... — George McGovern

Ever since I was a young man, I wanted to run for the presidency in the worst possible way - and I did. — George McGovern

It would be a good time to replace the drug war with something more constructive. The cure offered the drug war today has probably been more harmful and done more damage than the disease. — George McGovern

I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there's a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don't think that's necessarily true. — George McGovern

Every once in a while, I run into somebody who tells me that she met her husband in my campaign or a husband who says, I met my wife. I have to tell you, I caused a few divorces too. — George McGovern

It is a modern tragedy that one of the Soviet Union's most intelligent and realistic leaders has served and died during the administration of the most ill-informed and dangerous man ever to occupy the White House. — George McGovern

It's a tough thing, to know what to do about a war that deep in your gut you feel is wrong and yet watch your peers going off to fight in that war. — George McGovern

People didn't have the political guts to stand up against an American war. — George McGovern

Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills. — George McGovern

I am fed up with a system which busts the pot smoker and lets the big dope racketeer go free. — George McGovern

Reaganism is not only at odds with the Judeo-Christian heritage, it will not work. — George McGovern

From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America. — George McGovern

Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This Chamber reeks of blood. — George McGovern

My father was a clergyman and always said: 'Hate the sin but love the sinner.' — George McGovern

It doesn t require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed it won t be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate. — George McGovern

No man should advocate a course in private that he's ashamed to admit in public. — George McGovern

I don't think the American people had a clear picture of either Nixon or me. I think they thought that Nixon was a strong, decisive, tough-minded guy and that I was an idealist and antiwar guy who might not attach enough significance to the security of the country. The truth is, I was the guy with the war record, and my opposition to Vietnam was because I was interested in the nation's well-being. — George McGovern

At least I have precluded the possibility of peaking too early. — George McGovern

And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system. The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. — George McGovern

This total failure to address the diet/cancer relationship is most disturbing to ... those ... informed ... — George McGovern

The earth has enough knowledge and resources to eradicate this ancient scourge. Hunger has plagued the world for thousands of years. But ending it is a greater moral imperative now than ever before, because for the first time humanity has the instruments at hand to defeat this cruel enemy at a very reasonable cost. We have the ability to provide food for all within the next three decades. — George McGovern

I fully endorse the millennial goals to make (hunger) history, ... Those are big goals, but it's do-able. — George McGovern

The longer the title, the less important the job. — George McGovern

I hope I live long enough to see every hungry school child in the world being fed under the so-called McGovern-Dole program. — George McGovern

I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for a comprehensive Middle East settlement and for a 'new world order' based not on Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court. — George McGovern

I wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House. — George McGovern

When I was small, my most serious handicap was a painful bashfulness in the presence of strangers. — George McGovern

For a generation and more, the government has sought to meet our needs by multiplying its bureaucracy. Washington has taken too much in taxes from Main Street, and Main Street has received too little in return. It is not necessary to centralize power in order to solve our problems. — George McGovern

We are at a crossroads over how the federal government in Washington and state legislatures and city councils across the land allocate their financial resources. Which fork we take will say a lot about Americans and our values. — George McGovern

When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I. — George McGovern

I would not plan to base my campaign primarily on opposition to the war in the Persian Gulf. — George McGovern

It's nice not to have to worry about constituents. — George McGovern

When you start one of these programs, school lunch programs, in a country that heretofore had nothing of that kind, immediately school enrollment jumps dramatically. Girls and boys get to the classroom with the promise of a good meal once a day. — George McGovern

I think it was my study of history that convinced me that the Democratic Party was more on the side of the average American. — George McGovern

It's possible to dazzle a crowd if you really work at it. But that is no qualification for leadership. Hitler was a master of crowds. — George McGovern

Every program that ever helped working people, from rural electrification to Medicare, was enacted by liberals over the opposition of conservatives. When people tell me they don't like liberals, I ask, "Do you like Social Security? If so, then shut up!" — George McGovern

Democrats believe that the federal government is not our enemy, it's our partner. — George McGovern

And this is the time. It is the time for this land to become again a witness to the world for what is noble and just in human affairs. It is the time to live more with faith and less with fear- with an abiding confidence that can sweep away the strongest barriers between us and teach us that we truly are brothers and sisters. — George McGovern

I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie. — George McGovern

I am 1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton and I have no intention of dropping him from the ticket. — George McGovern

I'm a movie buff. — George McGovern

I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it. — George McGovern

When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up. — George McGovern

Never say anything that, down inside, you think is wrong. — George McGovern

My dad was a Methodist minister. — George McGovern

I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that. — George McGovern

Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind. — George McGovern

I'm what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like. — George McGovern

One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security. — George McGovern

Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior. — George McGovern

It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well. — George McGovern

If you're Iran's minister of defense, I think you'd try to develop at least one nuclear weapon to save yourself from what happened to Iraq. — George McGovern

Now, I simply do what I want. — George McGovern

I was tired. I hadn't slept eight hours in two, three years. I lived on four, five hours of sleep. You can do it during a campaign because thousands are screaming for you. You're getting adrenaline shots each day. Then the campaign ends, and there are no more shots. — George McGovern

If we are willing to concede the President dictatorial authority where we happen to agree with him, as liberals have tended to do over the years, we will have little chance of tying his hands when we do not ... You will see why many of us in the Congress understand how Dr. Frankenstein must have felt when his creation ran amok. — George McGovern

I seek to call America home to those principles that gave us birth. — George McGovern