Quotes By Hubert H. Humphrey

The Senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour.

Anyone who thinks that the vice-president can take a position independent of the president of his administration simply has no knowledge of politics or government. You are his choice in a political marriage, and he expects your absolute loyalty.

Leadership in today's world requires far more than a large stock of gunboats and a hard fist at the conference table.

Compassion is not weakness, and concern for the unfortunate is not socialism.

Asia is rich in people, rich in culture and rich in resources. It is also rich in trouble.

It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

A politician never forgets the precarious nature of elective life. We have never established a practice of tenure in public office.

Never answer a question from a farmer.

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate.

We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost.

In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.

Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.

Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true.

There are not enough jails, not enough police, not enough courts to enforce a law not supported by the people.

There are those who say to you - we are rushing this issue of civil rights. I say we are 172 years late.

We believe that to err is human. To blame it on someone else is politics.

Foreign policy is really domestic policy with its hat on.

Each child is an adventure into a better life - an opportunity to change the old pattern and make it new.

The President has only 190 million bosses. The Vice President has 190 million and one.

Freedom is the most contagious virus known to man.

American public opinion is like an ocean, it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.

The essence of statesmanship is not a rigid adherence to the past, but a prudent and probing concern for the future.

For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

National isolation breeds national neurosis.