Top 160 Herbert Hoover Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “All progress and growth is a matter of change, but change must be growth within our social and government concepts if it should not destroy them.”

— Herbert Hoover

102. “The course of unbalanced budgets is the road to ruin.”

— Herbert Hoover

103. “No great question will ever be settled in dollars and cents. Great questions must be settled on moral grounds and the tests of what makes free men.”

— Herbert Hoover

104. “Bless the children, for the national debt is theirs.”

— Herbert Hoover

105. “The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.”

— Herbert Hoover

106. “Once upon a time my political opponents honored me as possessing the fabulous intellectual and economic power by which I created a worldwide depression all by myself.”

— Herbert Hoover

107. “The only problem with capitalism is the capitalists.”

— Herbert Hoover

108. “Many women are now holding posts of grave responsibility in city and country and state and nation, and their number must be greatly increased.”

— Herbert Hoover

109. “The recognition of Russia on November 16, 1933, started forces which were to have considerable influence in the attempt to collectivize the United States.”

— Herbert Hoover

110. “It was the transcendent fortitude and steadfastness of these men who in adversity and in suffering through the darkest hour of our history held faithful to an ideal. Here men endured that a nation might live.”

— Herbert Hoover

111. “No prosaic description can portray the grandeur of 40 miles of rugged mountains rising beyond a placid lake in which each shadowy precipice and each purple gorge is reflected with a vividness that rivals the original.”

— Herbert Hoover

112. “I am sure I’d have made a better all-around man if I hadn’t lost so much time just making a living.”

— Herbert Hoover

113. “Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.”

— Herbert Hoover

114. “There is no more cruel illusion than that war makes a people richer.”

— Herbert Hoover

115. “Lewis Strauss is one of my best friends.”

— Herbert Hoover

116. “Eat plenty, wisely, without waste.”

— Herbert Hoover

117. “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

118. “I was for a short time on the baseball team as shortstop, where I was no good.”

— Herbert Hoover

119. “Every generation has the right to build its own world out of the materials of the past, cemented by the hopes of the future.”

— Herbert Hoover

120. “Truly every generation discovers the world all new again and knows it can improve it.”

— Herbert Hoover

121. “When I decided to go into politics I weighed the costs. I would get criticism. But I went ahead. So when virulent criticism came I wasn’t surprised. I was better able to handle it.”

— Herbert Hoover

122. “Baseball is the greatest of all team sports.”

— Herbert Hoover

123. “The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.”

— Herbert Hoover

124. “Wisdom often consists of knowing what to do next.”

— Herbert Hoover

125. “Our social and economic system cannot march toward better days unless it is inspired by things of the Spirit. It is here that the higher purposes of individualism must find their sustenance.”

— Herbert Hoover

126. “The job is nothing but a twenty-ring circus-with a whole lot of bad actors.”

— Herbert Hoover

127. “With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.”

— Herbert Hoover

128. “Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.”

— Herbert Hoover

129. “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

130. “Through baseball we channel boys desire for exercise and let off their explosive violence without letting them get into the police court.”

— Herbert Hoover

131. “I dare predict that the influence of the Treaty of Renunciation of War will be felt in a large proportion of all future international acts.”

— Herbert Hoover

132. “Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he is free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.”

— Herbert Hoover

133. “Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.”

— Herbert Hoover

134. “It is well to remember that the office of Chief Executive is in part a symbol of the nation and that leaders in a nation may differ in their own house but they have instant solidarity in the presence of foreign attack.”

— Herbert Hoover

135. “Whatever doubt there may be as to the quality or purpose of our free speech we certainly have ample volumes in production.”

— Herbert Hoover

136. “I suppose I could have called in the whole of the Army, but what was the use? All I had to do was call in Main Street itself.”

— Herbert Hoover

137. “Governments know that the life of the world cannot be saved if the soul of the world is allowed to be lost.”

— Herbert Hoover

138. “The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus every boy is a challenge to his elders.”

— Herbert Hoover

139. “Along this road of spending, the government either takes over, which is Socialism, or dictates institutional and economic life, which is Fascism.”

— Herbert Hoover

140. “No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.”

— Herbert Hoover

141. “You will expect me to discuss the late election. Well, as nearly as I can learn, we did not have enough votes on our side.”

— Herbert Hoover

142. “In the great mass of our people there are plenty individuals of intelligence from among whom leadership can be recruited.”

— Herbert Hoover

143. “We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.”

— Herbert Hoover

144. “Above all, we know that although Americans can be led to make great sacrifices, they do not like to be driven.”

— Herbert Hoover

145. “Somebody has inquired as to whether I will be going to the opening baseball game. I hope to have that pleasure.”

— Herbert Hoover

146. “One who brandishes a pistol must be prepared to shoot.”

— Herbert Hoover

147. “In the larger view the major forces of the depression now lie outside of the United States, and our recuperation has been retarded by the unwarranted degree of fear and apprehension created by these outside forces.”

— Herbert Hoover

148. “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

149. “If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.”

— Herbert Hoover

150. “It is always possible that occasional individuals may have overstepped the law and humanity in treatment of criminals and those charged with crime, and if so, they should be severely punished.”

— Herbert Hoover