George McGovern – 28 Quotes

28 Quotes by George McGovern

My dad was a Methodist minister.

– 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

I’ve come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.

– George McGovern

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

– George McGovern

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

– 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 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

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

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

– 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 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

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

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

– 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

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

– 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

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

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

– George McGovern

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

– George McGovern

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

– George McGovern

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

– 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

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

– 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

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

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

– George McGovern