Hubert Humphrey Quotes

42 Sourced Quotes

I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

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

Hubert Humphrey
Here we are, just as we ought to be, here we are, the people, here we are in a spirit of dedication, here we are the way politics ought to be in America, the politics of happiness, the politics of purpose and the politics of joy.

Hubert Humphrey
Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

Hubert Humphrey
The ugliness of bigotry stands in direct contradiction to the very meaning of America.

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

Hubert Humphrey
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.

Hubert Humphrey
The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

Hubert Humphrey
Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

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

Hubert Humphrey
We cannot use a double standard for measuring our own and other people's policies. Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantees of those practiced in our own country.

Hubert Humphrey
I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years at college.

Hubert Humphrey
To be realistic today is to be visionary. To be realistic is to be starry-eyed.

Hubert Humphrey
For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two billion members of the human family, our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. And I know that we can, and I know that we shall began [sic] here the fuller and richer realization of that hope — that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely well.

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

Hubert Humphrey
To those who say — My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say — To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states' rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.

Hubert Humphrey
Slumism is the pent-up anger of people living on the outside of affluence. Slumism is decay of structure and deterioration of the human spirit. Slumism is a virus which spreads through the body politic. As other "isms," it breeds disorder and demagoguery and hate.

Hubert Humphrey
If I believe in something, I will fight for it, with all I have. But I do not demand all or nothing. I would rather get something than nothing.

Hubert Humphrey
If today there is a proper American "sphere of influence" it is this fragile sphere called earth upon which all men live and share a common fate--a sphere where our influence must be for peace and justice.

Hubert Humphrey
The good old days were never that good, believe me. The good new days are today, and better days are coming tomorrow. Our greatest songs are still unsung.

Hubert Humphrey
We will be remembered not for the power of our weapons but for the power of our compassion, our dedication to human welfare.

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

Hubert Humphrey
The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.

Hubert Humphrey
The story of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land... America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life … we ought to be proud of it!

Hubert Humphrey
The pursuit of peace resembles the building of a great cathedral. It is the work of a generation. In concept it requires a mater-architect; in execution, the labors of many.

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

Hubert Humphrey
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.

Hubert Humphrey
I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humanness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

Hubert Humphrey
Much of our American progress has been the product of the individual who had an idea; pursued it; fashioned it; tenaciously clung to it against all odds; and then produced it, sold it, and profited from it.

Hubert Humphrey
The vast number of titles which are published each year—all of them are to the good, even if some of them may annoy or even repel us for a time. For none of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.

Hubert Humphrey