George Mcgovern Quotes

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

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

- George McGovern

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

- 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

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

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

- 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

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

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

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

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

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

- 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

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

- George McGovern

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

- 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

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

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 never even had the time to read novels.

- George McGovern

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

- 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 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 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'm a movie buff.

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.

- 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

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

- George McGovern

As an American, I want our forces to prevail.

- 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

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

- 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

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'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

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

- George McGovern

The whole campaign was a tragic case of mistaken identity.

- George McGovern

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

- 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 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

My dad was a Methodist minister.

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

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

- 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

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

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

- George McGovern

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.

- 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

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

- George McGovern

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

- 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

I've enjoyed myself 90 percent of the time.

- 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

The longer the title, the less important the job.

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

I met my wife in South Dakota.

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

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

- 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

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

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 nice not to have to worry about constituents.

- George McGovern

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

- George McGovern

I move ahead, I live.

- George McGovern