Herbert Hoover Quotes

Economic depression cannot be cured by legislative action or executive pronouncement. Economic wounds must be healed by the action of the cells of the economic body - the producers and consumers themselves.

- Herbert Hoover

Honor is not the exclusive property of any political party.

- Herbert Hoover

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

- Herbert Hoover

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

- Herbert Hoover

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

- Herbert Hoover

Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

- Herbert Hoover

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers.

- Herbert Hoover

The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.

- Herbert Hoover

The pause between the errors and trials of the day and the hopes of the night.

- Herbert Hoover

My earliest realization of the stir of national life was the torch parade in the Garfield campaign. On that occasion, I was not only allowed out that night, but I saw the lamps being filled and lighted.

- Herbert Hoover

Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.

- Herbert Hoover

The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

- Herbert Hoover

Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.

- Herbert Hoover

With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.

- Herbert Hoover

There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer - or maybe president.

- Herbert Hoover

Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.

- Herbert Hoover

America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.

- Herbert Hoover

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries - the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

- Herbert Hoover

Peace can be promoted by the limitation of arms and by the creation of the instrumentality for peaceful settlement of controversies. But it will become a reality only through self-restraint and active effort in friendliness and helpfulness.

- Herbert Hoover

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

- Herbert Hoover

The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus, every boy is a challenge to his elders.

- Herbert Hoover

No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

- Herbert Hoover

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

- Herbert Hoover

Freedom is the open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and human dignity.

- Herbert Hoover

Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.

- Herbert Hoover

The spirit of liberalism is to create free men; it is not the regimentation of men.

- Herbert Hoover

Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt.

- Herbert Hoover

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow... that are the aftermath of war.

- Herbert Hoover

America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.

- Herbert Hoover

Competition is not only the basis of protection to the consumer, but is the incentive to progress.

- Herbert Hoover

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

- Herbert Hoover

The Ritz Hotel has never yet provided game of such wondrous flavor as the bird plucked and half-cooked over the small boys' camp fire.

- Herbert Hoover

There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.

- Herbert Hoover

Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.

- Herbert Hoover

The engineer performs many public functions from which he gets only philosophical satisfactions. Most people do not know it, but he is an economic and social force.

- Herbert Hoover

At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.

- Herbert Hoover

A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.

- Herbert Hoover

Peace is not made at the council table or by treaties, but in the hearts of men.

- Herbert Hoover

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

- Herbert Hoover

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

- Herbert Hoover

The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.

- Herbert Hoover

One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.

- Herbert Hoover

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

- Herbert Hoover

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

- Herbert Hoover

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community - not from governmental restraints.

- Herbert Hoover

Within the soul of America is freedom of mind and spirit in man. Here alone are the open windows through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit. Here alone is human dignity not a dream but an accomplishment. Perhaps it is not perfect, but it is more full in realization here than any other place in the world.

- Herbert Hoover

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

- Herbert Hoover

Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.

- Herbert Hoover

When all the routines and details and the human bores get on our nerves, we just yearn to go away from here to somewhere else. To go fishing is a sound, a valid, and an accepted reason for an escape. It requires no explanation.

- Herbert Hoover

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

- Herbert Hoover

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

- Herbert Hoover

Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.

- Herbert Hoover

While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst, and with continued unity of effort, we shall rapidly recover. There is one certainty of the future of a people of the resources, intelligence and character of the people of the United States - that is, prosperity.

- Herbert Hoover

Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.

- Herbert Hoover

Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.

- Herbert Hoover

Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.

- Herbert Hoover

I am no supporter of factory labor for children, but I have never joined with those who clamored against proper work of children on farms outside their school hours.

- Herbert Hoover

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

- Herbert Hoover

We have not yet reached the goal but... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation.

- Herbert Hoover

When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.

- Herbert Hoover

Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.

- Herbert Hoover

No public man can be just a little crooked.

- Herbert Hoover

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

- Herbert Hoover

I'm the only person of distinction who has ever had a depression named for him.

- Herbert Hoover

True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.

- Herbert Hoover

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

- Herbert Hoover

The opportunities of America opened out to me the public schools. They carried me to the professional training of an American university. I began by working with my own hands for my daily bread.

- Herbert Hoover

Children are our most valuable natural resource.

- Herbert Hoover

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.

- Herbert Hoover

When there is a lack of honor in government, the morals of the whole people are poisoned.

- Herbert Hoover

All men are equal before fish.

- Herbert Hoover

In America today, we are nearer a final triumph over poverty than is any other land.

- Herbert Hoover

At 15 years of age, I left school to practice the profession of Office Boy in a business firm in Salem, Oregon.

- Herbert Hoover

This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.

- Herbert Hoover

Peace can be contributed to by respect for our ability in defense.

- Herbert Hoover

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

- Herbert Hoover

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

- Herbert Hoover

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

- Herbert Hoover

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

- Herbert Hoover