Herbert Hoover - American Quotes

23 Sourced Quotes

View all Herbert Hoover Quotes
I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.

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 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
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
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
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
True American Liberalism utterly denies the whole creed of socialism.

Herbert Hoover
American business needs a lifting purpose greater than the struggle of materialism.

Herbert Hoover
The priceless treasure of boyhood is his endless enthusiasm, his high store of idealism, his affections and his hopes. When we preserve these, we have made men. We have made citizens and we have made Americans.

Herbert Hoover
Along with currency manipulation, the New Deal introduced to Americans the spectacle of Fascist dictation to business, labor, and agriculture.

Herbert Hoover
The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.

Herbert Hoover
Absolute freedom of the press to discuss public questions is a foundation stone of American liberty.

Herbert Hoover
The American people from bitter experience have a rightful fear that great business units might be used to dominate our industrial life and by illegal and unethical practices destroy equality of opportunity...

Herbert Hoover
I am willing to pledge myself that if the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the local and state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and suffering … I will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.... I have the faith in the American people that such a day will not come.

Herbert Hoover
The American system of rugged individualism.

Herbert Hoover
It is those moral and spiritual qualities which rise alone in free men, which will fulfill the meaning of the word American. And with them will come centuries of further greatness to our country.

Herbert Hoover
You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.

Herbert Hoover
The ancient bitter opposition to improved methods on the ancient theory that it more than temporarily deprives men of employment... has no place in the gospel of American progress.

Herbert Hoover
While I can make no claim for having introduced the term "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life.

Herbert Hoover
I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.

Herbert Hoover
Liberalism should be found not striving to spread bureaucracy but striving to set bounds to it. True liberalism seeks all legitimate freedom first in the confident belief that without such freedom the pursuit of all other blessings and benefits is vain. That belief is the foundation of all American progress, political as well as economic.

Herbert Hoover
The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.

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

Herbert Hoover