George McGovern Quotes

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.

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

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

I met my wife in South Dakota.

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.

Im sick and tired of old men sitting around in air conditioned rooms here in Washington, dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

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.

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.

It's nice not to have to worry about constituents, now, I simply do what I want.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie. My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I'm what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.

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.

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

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

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

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

The longer the title, the less important the job.

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.

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.

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

Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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!"

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.

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.

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

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

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

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.

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

It's nice not to have to worry about constituents.

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

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.

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

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

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

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