George McGovern

“Politics is an act of faith you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public.”

“I've come to realize that protecting freedom of choice in our everyday lives is essential to maintaining a healthy civil society.”

“Democrats believe that the federal government is not our enemy, it's our partner.”

“I think the country's getting disgusted with Washington partly because of the decline of civility in government.”

“I hope someday we will be able to proclaim that we have banished hunger in the United States, and that we've been able to bring nutrition and health to the whole world.”

“The Establishment center... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster - a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.”

“I think it was my study of history that convinced me that the Democratic Party was more on the side of the average American.”

“I seek to call America home to those principles that gave us birth.”

“From secrecy and deception in high places, come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation, come home, America.”

“I hope I live long enough to see every hungry school child in the world being fed under the so-called McGovern-Dole program.”

“I wish I had known more firsthand about the concerns and problems of American businesspeople while I was a U.S. senator and later a presidential nominee. That knowledge would have made me a better legislator and a more worthy aspirant to the White House.”

“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.”

“I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

“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.”

“Well, we ought to be stirred, even to tears, by society's ills.”

“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.”

“I make one pledge above all others - to seek and speak the truth with all the resources of mind and spirit I command.”

“I would not plan to base my campaign primarily on opposition to the war in the Persian Gulf.”

“When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I.”

“When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.”

“People didn't have the political guts to stand up against an American war.”

“I did frequently refer to my war record in World War II, but not in any flamboyant way.”

“I was the guy who was constantly speaking out against the Vietnam War. I have no regrets about that.”

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