Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Disaster
War
Thought
Anything
Hard
Good
Unmitigated
Utter
Vietnam

More quotes by George McGovern

Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
You don't run for the presidency out of nostalgia.
George McGovern
Image
It really is true that an orator is simply a good man who speaks well.
George McGovern
Image
It's nice not to have to worry about constituents, now, I simply do what I want.
George McGovern
Image
I didn't know a damned thing about mental illness and neither did anyone around me.
George McGovern
Image
I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.
George McGovern
Image
We have the resources (to end hunger), we know what has to be done, and it's something that can be achieved at a rather modest cost
George McGovern
Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security.
George McGovern
Image
We are at a crossroads over how the federal government in Washington and state legislatures and city councils across the land allocate their financial resources. Which fork we take will say a lot about Americans and our values.
George McGovern
Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
Never say anything that, down inside, you think is wrong.
George McGovern
Image
I did frequently refer to my war record in World War II, but not in any flamboyant way.
George McGovern
Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie. My dad was a Methodist minister. I went off to war. I have been married to the same woman forever. I'm what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.
George McGovern
Image
I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.
George McGovern
Image
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.
George McGovern
Image
I always thought of myself as a moderate liberal, a fighter for peace and justice. I never thought of myself as being all that far out.
George McGovern
Image
Everyone is exposed to economic risks of some kind.
George McGovern