Herbert Hoover Quotes

150 Sourced Quotes

Progress will march if we hold an abiding faith in the intelligence, the initiative, the character, the courage, and the divine touch in the individual. We can safeguard these ends if we give to each individual that opportunity for which the spirit of America stands.

Herbert Hoover
Engineering without imagination sinks to a trade.

Herbert Hoover
The investor who wants to eliminate all risk in mining is like a man who expects to go bathing without getting wet.

Herbert Hoover
The association of Mount Ararat and Noah, the staunch Christians who were massacred periodically by the Mohammedan Turks, and the Sunday School collections over fifty years for alleviating their miseries-all cumulate to impress the name Armenia on the front of the American mind.

Herbert Hoover
Our individualism is rooted in our very nature. It is based on conviction born of experience. Equal opportunity, the demand for a fair chance, became the formula of American Individualism because it is the method of American achievement.

Herbert Hoover
Next to prayer, Fishing is the most personal relationship of man.

Herbert Hoover
Specifications are the formulated, definite, and complete statements of what the buyer requires of the seller.

Herbert Hoover
From the point of view of accuracy and intellectual honesty the more men of engineering background who become public officials, the better for representative government.

Herbert Hoover
I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence.

Herbert Hoover
We supported the cooperative movement among farmers. The movement was still young and stubbornly opposed to the commercial distributors. I believed it to be one of the most helpful undertakings, for according to my social theories any organization run by citizens for their own welfare is preferable to the same action by the government.

Herbert Hoover
The more one observes, the more clearly does he see that it is in the soil of pure science that are found the origins of all our modern industry and commerce. In fact,our civilization is wholly built upon our scientific discoveries.

Herbert Hoover
I hope you will forgive my dreadful curiosity, but I should like awfully to know — what is your profession? I replied that I was an engineer. She emitted an involuntary exclamation, and said Why, I thought you were a gentleman!

Herbert Hoover
Three qualities of greatness stood out in Woodrow Wilson. He was a man of staunch morals. He was more than just an idealist; he was the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people. He brought spiritual concepts to the peace table. He was a born crusader.

Herbert Hoover
The greatness of America has grown out of a political and social system and a method of control of economic forces distinctly its own - our American system.

Herbert Hoover
Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.

Herbert Hoover
What the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization of the nations who believe in God against this tide of Red agnosticism....And in rejecting an atheistic other world, I am confident that the Almighty God will be with us.

Herbert Hoover
While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover.

Herbert Hoover
I can at once refute the statement that the people of the West object to conservation of oil resources. They know that there is a limit to oil supplies and that the time will come when they and the Nation will need this oil much more than it is needed now. There are no half measures in conservation of oil.

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
The Union has become not merely a physical union of states, but rather a spiritual union in common ideals of our people. Within it is room for every variety of opinion, every possible experiment in social progress. Out of such variety comes growth, but only if we preserve and maintain our spiritual solidarity.

Herbert Hoover
An ideal is an unselfish aspiration. Its purpose is the general welfare not only of this but of future generations. It is a thing of the spirit. It is a generous and humane desire that all men may share equally in a common good. Our ideals are the cement, which binds human society.

Herbert Hoover
Liberalism is a force truly of the spirit proceeding from the deep realization that economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.

Herbert Hoover
Governments know that the life of the world cannot be saved if the soul of the world is allowed to be lost.

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

Herbert Hoover
To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.

Herbert Hoover
Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man.

Herbert Hoover
Our fathers and grandfathers who poured over the Midwest were self-reliant, rugged, God-fearing people of indomitable courage....They asked only for freedom of opportunity and equal chance. In these conceptions lies the real basis of American democracy. They and their fathers give a genius to American institutions that distinguished our people from any other in the world.

Herbert Hoover
The structure of human betterment cannot be built upon foundations of materialism or business, but upon the bedrock of individual character in free men and women.

Herbert Hoover
The party should stand for a constantly wider diffusion of property. That is the greatest social and economic security that can come to free men. It makes free men. We want a nation of proprietors, not a state of collectivists. That is attained by creating a national wealth and income, not by destroying it. The income and estate taxes create an orderly movement to diffuse swollen fortunes more effectively than all the quacks.

Herbert Hoover
Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.

Herbert Hoover