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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!

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
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More quotes by George McGovern

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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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I didn't know a damned thing about mental illness and neither did anyone around me.
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Somehow politicians have become convinced that negative campaigning pays off in elections.
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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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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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A conscientious man would be cautious how he dealt in blood.
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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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When I was small, my most serious handicap was a painful bashfulness in the presence of strangers.
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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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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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One of the sharp parallels is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq was the slightest threat to America's national security.
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The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plain.
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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.
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When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.
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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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My dad was a Methodist minister.
George McGovern
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Never say anything that, down inside, you think is wrong.
George McGovern
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I always thought of myself as a good old South Dakota boy who grew up here on the prairie.
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I'm what a normal, healthy, ideal American should be like.
George McGovern
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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.
George McGovern