George McGovern Quotes - Page 2

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!"

I am a liberal and always have been - just not the wild-eyed character the Republicans made me out to be.

Don't throw away your conscience.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.

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.

The longer the title, the less important the job.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.