Top 80 George S. McGovern Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— George S. McGovern

2. “Im sick and tired of old men sitting around in air conditioned rooms here in Washington, dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

— George S. McGovern

3. “Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction ‘Love the neighbor as thyself.’”

— George S. McGovern

4. “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 S. McGovern

5. “Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This Chamber reeks of blood.”

— George S. McGovern

6. “You know, sometimes, when they say you’re ahead of your time, it’s just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.”

— George S. McGovern

7. “I am 1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton and I have no intention of dropping him from the ticket.”

— George S. McGovern

8. “It would be a good time to replace the drug war with something more constructive. The cure offered the drug war today has probably been more harmful and done more damage than the disease.”

— George S. McGovern

9. “I suppose politicians have always wanted to get re-elected, but there’s a kind of a feeling now that if you just discredit your opposition, it makes it easier for you to win. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.”

— George S. McGovern

10. “The longer the title, the less important the job.”

— George S. McGovern

11. “The nature of freedom of choice is that some people will misuse their responsibility and hurt themselves in the process. We should do our best to educate them, but without diminishing choice for everyone else.”

— George S. McGovern

12. “Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother’s keeper...”

— George S. McGovern

13. “No man should advocate a course in private that he’s ashamed to admit in public.”

— George S. McGovern

14. “From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.”

— George S. McGovern

15. “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 S. McGovern

16. “Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.”

— George S. McGovern

17. “I am fed up with a system which busts the pot smoker and lets the big dope racketeer go free.”

— George S. McGovern

18. “I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.”

— George S. McGovern

19. “My heart does sometimes bleed for those who are hurting in my own country and abroad.”

— George S. McGovern

20. “The whole campaign was a tragic case of mistaken identity.”

— George S. McGovern

21. “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 S. McGovern

22. “There is a strong tendency in the United States to rally round the flag and their troops, no matter how mistaken the war.”

— George S. McGovern

23. “Don’t throw away your conscience.”

— George S. McGovern

24. “I didn’t used to care about living a long time. Not that I wasn’t enjoying life, but I never sat around asking how I’d get to be 100, you know. But now I want to live long enough to see every school child in the world getting a good, nutritious lunch every day.”

— George S. McGovern

25. “At least I have precluded the possibility of peaking too early.”

— George S. McGovern

26. “I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie. My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I’m what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.”

— George S. McGovern

27. “When you start one of these programs, school lunch programs, in a country that heretofore had nothing of that kind, immediately school enrollment jumps dramatically. Girls and boys get to the classroom with the promise of a good meal once a day.”

— George S. McGovern

28. “It is a modern tragedy that one of the Soviet Union’s most intelligent and realistic leaders has served and died during the administration of the most ill-informed and dangerous man ever to occupy the White House.”

— George S. McGovern

29. “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 S. McGovern

30. “I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise.”

— George S. McGovern

31. “I make one pledge above all others – to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command.”

— George S. McGovern

32. “Under the guise of protecting us from ourselves, the right and the left are becoming ever more aggressive in regulating behavior.”

— George S. McGovern

33. “It’s possible to dazzle a crowd if you really work at it. But that is no qualification for leadership. Hitler was a master of crowds.”

— George S. McGovern

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

— George S. McGovern

35. “Every program that ever helped working people, from rural electrification to Medicare, was enacted by liberals over the opposition of conservatives. When people tell me they don’t like liberals, I ask, “Do you like Social Security? If so, then shut up!””

— George S. McGovern

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

— George S. McGovern

37. “Now, I simply do what I want.”

— George S. McGovern

38. “Reaganism is not only at odds with the Judeo-Christian heritage, it will not work.”

— George S. McGovern

39. “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 S. McGovern

40. “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 S. McGovern

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

— George S. McGovern

42. “Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.”

— George S. McGovern

43. “I was tired. I hadn’t slept eight hours in two, three years. I lived on four, five hours of sleep. You can do it during a campaign because thousands are screaming for you. You’re getting adrenaline shots each day. Then the campaign ends, and there are no more shots.”

— George S. McGovern

44. “It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.”

— George S. McGovern

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

— George S. McGovern

46. “It can take greater courage to stand in opposition to the views of your neighbors or nation than to confront an enemy in combat.”

— George S. McGovern

47. “If Reagan wins, I’d sell the farm and buy a bomb shelter.”

— George S. McGovern

48. “Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.”

— George S. McGovern

49. “Never say anything that, down inside, you think is wrong.”

— George S. McGovern

50. “I flew a full string of 35 combat missions over some of the most heavily defended targets in Europe. We were hitting Hitler’s oil refineries, his tank factories, his aircraft factories, his railway yards. Those were our prime targets.”

— George S. McGovern