Herbert Hoover Quotes

As a nation we must prevent hunger and cold to those of our people who are in honest difficulties.

I'm the only person of distinction who's ever had a depression named after him.

The American people are doing their job today. They should be given a chance to show whether they wish to preserve the principles of individual and local responsibility and mutual self-help before they embark on what I believe to be a disastrous system. I feel sure they will succeed if given the opportunity.

Wages have increased, the cost of living has decreased. The job of every man and woman has been made more secure. We have in this short period decreased the fear of poverty, the fear of unemployment, the fear of old age; and these fears that are the greatest calamities of human kind.

Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.

There is no economic failure so terrible in its import as that of a country possessing a surplus of every necessity of life in which numbers willing and anxious to work, are deprived of dire necessities. It simply cannot be if our moral and economic system is to survive.

I’m the only person of distinction who’s ever had a depression named for him.

The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.

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

One of the oldest and perhaps the noblest of human aspirations has been the abolition of poverty. By poverty I mean the grinding by undernourishment, cold and ignorance and fear of old age of those who have the will to work. We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us. We have not yet reached the goal, but given a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, and [sic] we shall soon with the help of God be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this Nation. There is no guarantee against poverty equal to a job for every man. That is the primary purpose of the economic policies we advocate.

No one ever listened themselves out of a job.

The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.

The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.

In order that there can be no doubt as to its antithesis to Liberalism, we may well accept Premier Mussolini’s definition of Fascism: . . . ‘Granted that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism and Democracy . . . it may rather be expected that this will be the century of authority, a century of the left, a century of Fascism; for if the nineteenth century was a century of individualism (Liberalism always signifying individualism) it may be expected that this will be the century of collectivism, and hence the century of the state. . .’

If, by the grace of God, we have passed the worst of this storm, the future months will be easy. If we shall be called upon to endure more of this period, we must gird ourselves for even greater effort, for today we are writing the introduction to the future history of civilization in America. The question is whether that history shall be written in terms of individual responsibility, and the capacity of the Nation for voluntary cooperative action, or whether it shall be written in terms of futile attempt to cure poverty by the enactment of law, instead of the maintained and protected initiative of our people.