Eugene Mccarthy Quotes

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it’s important.

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy was the last American presidential candidate who thought flattering an audience’s intelligence was the way to win their hearts and their votes.

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts.

...my beloved Eudosia [a member of Buckley's household staff], who is Cuban, very large, quite old, and altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb.

Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, but dumb enough to think it’s important. — Senator Eugene McCarthy “Dick,

Keller, who devoted much of her later life to raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind, never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change. Having herself fought so hard to speak, she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union to fight for the free speech of others. She sent $100 to the NAACP with a letter of support that appeared in its magazine The Crisis—a radical act for a white person from Alabama in the 1920s. She supported Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate, in each of his campaigns for the presidency. She composed essays on the women’s movement, on politics, on economics. Near the end of her life, she wrote to Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, leader of the American Communist Party, who was then languishing in jail, a victim of the McCarthy era: “Loving birthday greetings, dear Elizabeth Flynn! May the sense of serving mankind bring strength and peace into your brave heart!

Eisenhower’s final warning was about the military-industrial complex. And what he didn’t say is that it developed while he was president.

When I tell my undergraduates that I once advised Barack Obama, they’re somewhat impressed. Labor secretary to Bill Clinton? Their eyes begin to glaze over. Worked for Jimmy Carter? Not particularly interested. Interned for Bobby Kennedy? Campaigned for Eugene McCarthy? They look puzzled, as if I’ve entered the misty expanses of ancient history. Sometimes I follow this by telling them I started my career as an assistant to Abraham Lincoln. This used to elicit a laugh. I’m beginning to fear it won’t much longer. But every day I consider myself blessed for having the great good fortune to spend most of my time with these young people. They inspire me. They push me. They make me laugh. They help me play the long game. They’re going to inherit the mess my generation has bequeathed them. Instead of being bitter or angry, they have all sorts of ideas for how to clean it up, fix it, make the world better. They have the energy and determination to succeed. They keep me optimistic and sane. They make me hopeful that the common good can be resurrected.