Hubert Humphrey Quotes

The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.

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

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

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left.

You people voted for Hubert Humphrey and killed Jesus!

The senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour. Hubert Humphrey, as quoted by Biden, p. 134

In life it isn't what you've lost, it's what you've got left that counts

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.

Hubert Humphrey is a treacherous, gutless old ward-heeler who should be put in a goddamn bottle and sent out with the Japanese current.

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

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 elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life – the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.

[He]talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.

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.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.

The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it.

Unfortunately, our affluent society has also been an effluent society.

To err is human. To blame someone else is politics.

Hubert Humphrey’s wife is said to have advised him: “Darling, for a speech to be immortal it need not be interminable.

Be civilized. Grudges are for Neanderthals. – Hubert Humphrey

The 1968 bugging issue revolved around a Republican initiative to undermine Johnson's Paris peace talks that could have ended the Vietnam War and brought home 500,000 American soldiers then fighting in Indochina. The Nixon-Agnew campaign, however, feared that this 'October Surprise' would catapult Vice President Hubert Humphrey to victory and again deny Nixon the White House.

You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate.

Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible.

Never give in and never give up.

The moral test of government is how it treats people in the dawn of life, the children, in the twilight of life, the aged, and in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped

Racism is racism–and there is no room in America for racism of any color. And we must reject calls for racism, whether they come from a throat that is white or one that is black.

Life's unfairness is not irrevocable; we can help balance the scales for others, if not always for ourselves.

Just be what you are and speak from your guts and heart—it’s all a man has. —Hubert Humphrey

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920s and 1930s when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

614246 "... in an airport in '64, Goldwater said, 'Well, keep punching, Hubert' during a chance meeting there. By the end of 1977, it became increasingly clear that the Boss (Hubert Humphrey) would not be around much longer. And on the Senate floor one day, Barry Goldwater walked across the aisle and enveloped Hubert Humphrey. Goldwater was so big and Humphrey so frail that Humphrey almost disappeared. The two men stood for a long moment, locked in a hug, and I could see that both men were crying. They made no effort to hide it." — Joe Biden (Promises to Keep: On Life and Politics)

Humphrey will go into a black neighborhood in Milwaukee and drench the streets with tears while deploring “the enduring tragedy” that life in Nixon’s America has visited on “these beautiful little children”—and then act hurt and dismayed when a reporter who covered his Florida campaign reminds him that “In Miami you were talking just a shade to the Left of George Wallace and somewhere to the Right of Mussolini.” Hubert

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of the citizens to keep and bear arms. [...] the right of the citizens to bear arms is just one guarantee against arbitrary government and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

Never give in,never give up,never surrender no matter what!

Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts -- it's what you do with what you have left.

The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received .

And what kind of sick and twisted impulse would cause a professional sportswriter to deliver a sermon from the Book of Revelations off his hotel balcony on the dawn of Super Sunday? I had not planned a sermon for that morning. I had not even planned to be in Houston, for that matter… . But now, looking back on that outburst, I see a certain inevitability about it. Probably it was a crazed and futile effort to somehow explain the extremely twisted nature of my relationship with God, Nixon and the National Football League: The three had long since become inseparable in my mind, a sort of unholy trinity that had caused me more trouble and personal anguish in the past few months than Ron Ziegler, Hubert Humphrey and Peter Sheridan all together had caused me in a year on the campaign trail.

IN THE PRESIDENTIAL race of 1968, Richard Nixon defeated Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had stepped forward to run when LBJ shocked the country by declining to seek reelection. Nixon carried thirty-two states and more than three hundred electoral votes. He took his oath of office on January 20, 1969. An hour later, LBJ departed the nation’s capital, where he had been a fixture since his election to Congress in 1937. He left with few friends.

I walked to work by cutting across the Washington Mall in front of the US Capital to the Hubert Humphrey building … In an overly large lobby … High on one of the walls is a quotation from Hubert Humphrey, the Minnesotan who served as Vice President to Lyndon Johnson. It reads, "The moral test of government is how that government treat those who are in the dawn of life: the children, those who are in the twilight of life: the elderly, and those who are in the shadow of life: the sick, the needy, and the handicapped.

“I heard something earlier, from Humphrey’s friend, Hubert. We stopped at his inn.” Morpheus practically beams. “Ah, Hubert. How is the old sot?” “Glittery.” I furrow my brow. “And grumpy.” A deep laugh rumbles in Morpheus’s chest. “I’ve always enjoyed his company.” “Yeah.” I scowl. “He’s a real good egg.

The ABM strategy—a very shrewd plan, on paper—was to hold McGovern under the 1500 mark for two ballots, forcing him to peak without winning, then confront the convention with an alternative (ABM) candidate on the third ballot—and if that failed, try another ABM candidate on the fourth ballot, then yet another on the fifth, etc…. on into infinity, for as many ballots as it would take to nominate somebody acceptable to the Meany/Daley axis. The name didn’t matter. It didn’t even make much difference if He, She, or It couldn’t possibly beat Nixon in November… the only thing that mattered to the Meany/Daley crowd was keeping control of The Party; and this meant the nominee would have to be some loyal whore with more debts to Big Labor than he could ever hope to pay… somebody like Hubert Humphrey, or a hungry opportunist like Terry Sanford.

Hubert Humphrey advised new members, “If you feel an urge to stand up and make a speech attacking Vietnamese policy, don’t make it.

L’estinzione dello statista Gary Hart* | 805 parole Per quelli di noi che hanno avuto il privilegio di servire nel Congresso degli Stati Uniti alcuni anni fa, ci sono notevoli differenze tra i migliori dei nostri colleghi di allora e molti degli attuali membri delle due Camere. Le differenze hanno a che fare con la levatura e le doti di statista. Come si spiega questa differenza? Ha in gran parte a che fare con la rivoluzione nei media. Le tre principali tribune trent’anni fa o giù di lì erano i programmi delle interviste della domenica mattina mandate in onda sui network e, in misura minore, i programmi quotidiani del mattino. Cronisti politici di lungo corso e intervistatori erano ben versati nelle questioni del giorno e avevano accumulato anni di esperienza sulle vicende nazionali e internazionali. Ci si aspettava che i personaggi politici, in particolare tra i candidati ad incarichi nazionali, sapessero di che cosa stessero parlando, e se così non era, le loro pecche erano evidenti. Le interviste e le discussioni erano serie, ma raramente conflittuali e certamente non di parte. Più di recente, le cose sono cambiate. Adesso abbiamo trasmissioni non-stop via cavo, network partigiani, intervistatori che si distinguono solo per il sensazionalismo e le polemiche, conduttori pieni di sé abili nell’arte del comizio, batterie di sconosciuti «strateghi» politici con poca o nessuna esperienza al di là di una precedente campagna (e un parrucchiere) domande conflittuali che sottintendono la malafede dell’intervistato, e un generale disprezzo per i personaggi politici basata sulla superiorità dell’intervistatore. In breve, i media - i mezzi con cui gli eletti comunicano con i cittadini - sono ora un quarto ramo del governo e si ritengono uguali se non superiori rispetto ai rappresentanti eletti e si auto-attribuiscono il ruolo di tribuni della plebe. E in cima a questo, la compressione dei media - la necessità di comunicare con slogan di otto secondi e con i 140 caratteri di un tweet. Il risultato è che si privilegiano politici loquaci, brillanti, affascinanti e semplici rispetto a quelli del passato più inclini a essere riflessivi, determinati, sostanziali e diplomatici. Questo processo sacrifica gli statisti, uomini e donne istruiti, e con esperienza nell’arte del governo. L’ulteriore risultato è la divisione della nazione in fazioni avverse servite da media di parte che riciclano pregiudizi diffusi e dogmi e con poco riguardo per un’analisi ponderata dei complessi temi nazionali e internazionali che richiedono senso della storia, impegno per l’interesse nazionale a lungo termine e il prevalere del senso dello Stato sullo spirito di parte. Si sbaglierebbe, tuttavia, a credere che la massiva trasformazione dei media sia la sola responsabile per la diminuita statura dei leader. E’ colpa anche della conversione dei legislatori in cacciatori di fondi a pieno tempo e la costante opposizione di eserciti di lobbisti. Anche i senatori, che restano in carica per sei anni, sprecano una parte di ogni giorno di quei sei anni a questuare contributi. È umiliante per loro e per la nazione che servono. A rischio di farne una questione personale, mettete a confronto (se avete una certa età) l’attuale generazione di politici che aspirano a un incarico di rilievo nazionale con, per esempio, Abe Ribicoff, Stuart Symington, Mike Mansfield, Gaylord Nelson, Charles Mathias, Jacob Javits Clifford Case, Ed Muskie, William Fulbright, Hubert Humphrey, e molti, molti altri. Andati. Tutti andati. Nell’America di oggi ci sono di certo figure di uguale statura. Ma pochi di loro si sottoporrebbero al frullatore mediatico, all’umiliante ricerca di fondi e alla lotta nel fango dell’arena politica che viene definito percorso legislativo. E’ troppo aspettarsi a breve termine il ritorno a un processo politico più serio. C’è troppo denaro dei media e potere in gioco, nel sistema attuale. E non ci sarà mai carenza di perso

Johnson had a sense of humor, and he could kid with me,” he would say. “Johnson didn’t enjoy talking with most liberals. He didn’t think they had a sense of humor.

The greatest gift of life is friendship and I have received it.

It had taken three murders - Martin Luther King, Jr., and two Kennedys - to leave the country with this choice between Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.

The greatest gift of life is friendship, and I have received it. l

The biggest mistake in my political life was not to learn how to use television.

With the best of intentions, the reformers conflated what savage cops did in the streets with the backroom deal-making that wired the convention for Hubert Humphrey—just as Mayor Daley’s police tarred peaceful McCarthy campaign bureaucrats with the rampages of the revolutionary left.

Kissinger was true to his word, and during the 1968 presidential contest, after his favorite, Nelson Rockefeller, failed to win the Republican nomination, he covered all his bases. In a well-known and still controversial episode, he passed along information to the Nixon people about the Johnson administration’s last, and futile, efforts at negotiations with the North Vietnamese; he also offered to provide the Hubert Humphrey camp with the Rockefeller campaign’s files on Richard Nixon. “Six days a week I’m for Hubert,” he told a friend, “but on the seventh day I think they’re both awful.” Like Morgenthau, he reluctantly voted for Nixon—or so he says. In any case, Kissinger’s political double-dealing contributed to his winning the trust of the pathologically untrusting Nixon and landing the position of national security adviser with the new administration. Humphrey later said that if he had won the presidency he too would have appointed Kissinger national security adviser, suggesting two things: first, that Kissinger’s deviousness had paid off; second, that America’s Vietnam policy would not have been very different if Humphrey had been in the White House instead of Nixon.

The Times celebration of Brown as confirming constitutional color blindness was widely shared in America. In the debates over the Kennedy-Johnson civil rights bill in 1963 and 1964, the bipartisan congressional leadership appealed to the classical liberal model of color-blind justice, leaning over backwards to deny charges by southern opponents that the law could lead to quotas or other forms of preference for minorities. Indeed, the legislative history of the Civil Rights Act shows what John David Skrentny, author of The Ironies of Affirmative Action, called “an almost obsessive concern” for maintaining fidelity to a color-blind concept of equal individual rights. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, the majority (Democratic) whip behind the bill, explained simply: “Race, religion and national origin are not to be used as the basis for hiring and firing.” Title VII required employers to treat citizens differing in race, sex, national origin, or religion equally, as abstract citizens differing only in merit. Section 703(j) of the Civil Rights Act states: “Nothing contained in this title shall be interpreted to require any employer… to grant preferential treatment to any individual or to any group because of the race, color, religion, sex, or national origin of such individual or group on account of an imbalance which my exist with respect to the total number or percentage of persons of any race, color, religion, sex, or national origin employed by an employer.” The syntax was classic legalese, but the meaning was unambiguous. The Senate’s floor managers for Title VII, Joseph S. Clark (D-Pa.) and Clifford P. Case (R-N.J.), told their colleagues, “The concept of discrimination… is clear and simple and has no hidden meanings. …To discriminate means to make a distinction, to make a difference in treatment or favor, which is based on any five of the forbidden criteria: race, color, religion, sex, or nation origin.” They continued: There is no requirement in Title VII that an employer maintain a balance in his work force. On the contrary, any deliberate attempt to maintain a racial balance, whatever such a balance may be, would involve a violation of Title VII because maintaining such a balance would require an employer to hire or refuse to hire on the basis of race. It must be emphasized that discrimination is prohibited to any individual. Humphrey, trying to lay to rest what he called the “bugaboo” of racial quotas raised by filibustering southerners in his own party and by some conservative Republicans as well, reaffirmed the bill’s color-blind legislative intent: “That bugaboo has been brought up a dozen times; but it is nonexistent. In fact the very opposite is true. Title VII prohibits discrimination. In effect, it sways that race, religion, and national origin are not to be used as the basis for hiring and firing.” Humphrey even famously pledged on the Senate floor that if any wording could be found in Title VII “which provides that an employer will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related to color, … I will start eating the pages [of the bill] one after another.

One of the most striking scenes of the 1970s was Hubert Humphrey’s funeral. Seated next to Hubert’s beloved wife was former President Richard M. Nixon, a long-time political adversary of Humphrey, and a man disgraced by Watergate. Humphrey himself had asked Nixon to have that place of honor. Three days before Senator Humphrey died, Jesse Jackson visited him in the hospital. Humphrey told Jackson that he had just called Nixon. Reverend Jackson, knowing their past relationship, asked Humphrey why. Here is what Hubert Humphrey had to say, From this vantage point, with the sun setting in my life, all of the speeches, the political conventions, the crowds, and the great fights are behind me. At a time like this you are forced to deal with your irreducible essence, forced to grapple with that which is really important. And what I have concluded about life is that when all is said and done, we must forgive each other, redeem each other, and move on. Do

He longed, he said, for the glorious spirit of bipartisan consensus he had witnessed during the nation’s Bicentennial celebrations, and at Hubert Humphrey’s funeral. So he concluded with a challenge to his colleagues: “If you want to see the reputations of decent people sullied, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see people of dignity, integrity, and self-respect refuse to seek public office for fear of what might be conjured or dredged up to attack them or their families, stand aside and be silent.… “If you want to see dissent crushed and expression stifled, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see the fevered exploitation of a handful of highly emotional issues distract the nation from problems of great consequence, stand aside and be silent. “If you want to see your government deadlocked by rigid intransigence, stand aside and be silent. “If you want this nation held up to worldwide scorn and ridicule because of the outrageous statements and bizarre beliefs of its leaders, stand aside and be silent and let the Howard Phillipses, the Meldrim Thomsons, and the William Loebs speak for all of us.

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love" Hubert H. Humphrey

The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love" Hubert. H Humphrey

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. —HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

There is in every American, I think, something of the old Daniel Boone - who, when he could see the smoke from another chimney, felt himself too crowded and moved further out into the wilderness.

Hubert (Humphrey) prepares for a major address by taking a deep breath.

Senator Goldwater would have been a great success in the movies — working for 18th century Fox.

Meanwhile, the Democrats grew divided between supporters of Johnson’s foreign policy and those who had embraced Robert Kennedy’s antiwar position. This split played out in a particularly disruptive manner at the Democratic convention in Chicago. With Kennedy tragically gone, the traditional party organization stepped into the breach. The party insiders who dominated on the convention floor favored Vice President Hubert Humphrey, but Humphrey was deeply unpopular among antiwar delegates because of his association with President Johnson’s Vietnam policies. Moreover, Humphrey had not run in a single primary. His campaign, as one set of analysts put it, was limited to “party leaders, union bosses, and other insiders.” Yet, with the backing of the party regulars, including the machine of powerful Chicago mayor Richard Daley, he won the nomination on the first ballot.

Humphrey charged that Wallace’s third-party movement was part of Moscow’s plan to cause Americans to fight one another, and in a radio address four days later, he assailed Popular Front leaders for remaining “strangely silent” about aggressive acts of Russian policy