Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.
There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war.
Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.
Above all, being a Democrat means having compassion for others. ... It means standing up for people who have been kept down.
I hope I live long enough to see every hungry school child in the world being fed under the so-called McGovern-Dole program.
I think it was my study of history that convinced me that the Democratic Party was more on the side of the average American.
It can take greater courage to stand in opposition to the views of your neighbors or nation than to confront an enemy in combat.
You never fully get over [losing a presidential campaign]. But I've had a good life. I've enjoyed myself 90 percent of the time.
I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise.
Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.
I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
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.
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
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.
I have a very deep concern about President Obama putting in another 21,000 troops into Afghanistan with the promise of more to come.
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 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.
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.
The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain.
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.
From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.