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It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it.

George McGovern

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George McGovern
Age: 90 †
Born: 1922
Born: July 19
Died: 2012
Died: October 21
Autobiographer
Diplomat
Historian
Peace Activist
Politician
University Teacher
Avon
South Dakota
George Stanley McGovern
George S. McGovern
Young
Commit
Clearly
Requires
National
Americans
Unless
Security
War
Patriotic

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I would support a Presidential candidate who pledged to take the following steps: ... At the end of the war in the Persian Gulf, press for a comprehensive Middle East settlement and for a 'new world order' based not on Pax Americana but on peace through law with a stronger U.N. and World Court.
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I seek the presidency because I believe deeply in the American promise and can no longer accept the diminishing of that promise.
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I thought the Vietnam war was an utter, unmitigated disaster, so it was very hard for me to say anything good about it.
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I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.
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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.
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It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.
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Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.
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Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics.
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If you're Iran's minister of defense, I think you'd try to develop at least one nuclear weapon to save yourself from what happened to Iraq.
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Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'
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When I was small, my most serious handicap was a painful bashfulness in the presence of strangers.
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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.
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I am 1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton and I have no intention of dropping him from the ticket.
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Every Senator in this Chamber is partly responsible for sending 50,000 young Americans to an early grave. This Chamber reeks of blood.
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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.
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Every once in a while, I run into somebody who tells me that she met her husband in my campaign or a husband who says, I met my wife. I have to tell you, I caused a few divorces too.
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To those who charge that liberalism has been tried and found wanting, I answer that the failure is not in the idea, but in the course of recent history. The New Deal was ended by World War II. The New Frontier was closed by Berlin and Cuba almost before it was opened. And the Great Society lost its greatness in the jungles of Indochina.
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It doesn t require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed it won t be U.S. Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the Senate.
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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.
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The truth is that I oppose the Iraq war, just as I opposed the Vietnam War, because these two conflicts have weakened the U.S. and diminished our standing in the world and our national security.
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