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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.

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
Anything
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Unmitigated
Utter
Vietnam
Disaster
War
Thought

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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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Truth is a habit of integrity, not a strategy of politics.
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I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
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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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For a generation and more, the government has sought to meet our needs by multiplying its bureaucracy. Washington has taken too much in taxes from Main Street, and Main Street has received too little in return. It is not necessary to centralize power in order to solve our problems.
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You don't run for the presidency out of nostalgia.
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Every program that ever helped working people, from rural electrification to Medicare, was enacted by liberals over the opposition of conservatives. When people tell me they don't like liberals, I ask, Do you like Social Security? If so, then shut up!
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It's a tough thing, to know what to do about a war that deep in your gut you feel is wrong and yet watch your peers going off to fight in that war.
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Don't throw away your conscience.
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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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Pay attention to the hungry, both in this country and around the world. Pay attention to the poor. Pay attention to our responsibilities for world peace. We are our brother's keeper.
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Empathy is born out of the old biblical injunction 'Love the neighbor as thyself.'
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My dad was a Methodist minister.
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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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My father was a clergyman and always said: 'Hate the sin but love the sinner.'
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I didn't used to care about living a long time. Not that I wasn't enjoying life, but I never sat around asking how I'd get to be 100, you know. But now I want to live long enough to see every school child in the world getting a good, nutritious lunch every day.
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We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it....I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.
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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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It's nice not to have to worry about constituents.
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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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