Eugene Mccarthy Quotes

#1. I've been interested in American politics since I was eight. That was in 1968. It was an interesting year. I was a huge Eugene McCarthy supporter, so I guess he was the first senator I really knew about and cared about.

George Packer

#2. But they were as different as fire and ice. Robert Kennedy thought Eugene McCarthy was pompous, petty, and venal. McCarthy thought Kennedy was a spoiled, unintelligent demagogue.

Jack Newfield

#3. I admired Eugene McCarthy's courage and although I left his Senate staff after four years to accept a job as the researcher on the editorial page of the 'Washington Post,' I remained an admirer.

Kitty Kelley

#4. The first time I voted, I voted for Eugene McCarthy and I knew he wouldn't win, but it felt so great to vote for him, to vote for the right guy - the one who wanted peace.

Eileen Myles

#5. Eugene McCarthy is definitely an inspiration to me as a Democrat and as someone going to the university. It is definitely important to me.

Vanessa L. Williams

#6. Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.

Eugene McCarthy

#7. Anything said three times in Washington becomes a fact.

Eugene McCarthy

#8. One thing about a pig, he thinks he's warm if his nose is warm. I saw a bunch of pigs one time that had frozen together in a rosette, each one's nose tucked under the rump of the one in front. We have a lot of pigs in politics.

Eugene McCarthy

#9. The polls show that 10 percent of the public are ready to vote for me even though they don't know I'm running. We hope that figure won't drop when they learn I'm in the race.

Eugene McCarthy

#10. If any of you are secret poets, the best way to break into print is to run for the presidency,

Eugene McCarthy

#11. Never say anything in a national campaign that anyone might remember.

Eugene McCarthy

#12. No man could be equipped for the presidency if he has never been tempted by one of the seven cardinal sins.

Eugene McCarthy

#13. Have you ever tried to split sawdust?

Eugene McCarthy

#14. Nixon is the kind of guy who, if you were drowning twenty feet from shore, would throw you a fifteen-foot rope.

Eugene McCarthy

#15. Whatever is morally necessary must be made politically possible.

Eugene McCarthy

#16. This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country.

Eugene McCarthy

#17. I would not want to put him in charge of snake control in Ireland.

Eugene McCarthy

#18. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.

Eugene McCarthy

#19. Broken things are powerful.Things about to break are stronger still.The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.

Eugene McCarthy

#20. A newspaper may somewhat arrogantly assert that it prints "all the news that's fit to print." But no newspaper yet has been moved to declare at the end of each edition, "That's the way it is," as Walter Cronkite does.

Eugene McCarthy

#21. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts.

Eugene McCarthy

#22. You know when I first thought I might have a chance? When I realized that you could go into any bar in the country and insult Lyndon Johnson and nobody would punch you in the nose.

Eugene McCarthy

#23. We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.

Eugene McCarthy

#24. It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

Eugene McCarthy

#25. We don't declare war any more; we declare national defense.

Eugene McCarthy

#26. The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

Eugene McCarthy

#27. As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

Eugene McCarthy

#28. The difference between Carter and [Ted] Kennedy: Carter has this vague religion which he believes in strongly, while Kennedy has this strong religion which he believes in vaguely.

Eugene McCarthy

#29. Let us pick up again these lost strands and weave them again into the fabric of America, sort out the music from the sounds and again respond to the trumpet and the steady drum.

Eugene McCarthy

#30. Vote against anything introduced with a "re" in it, especially reforms, reorganizations, and recodifications. This usually means going back to something that failed once and is likely to do so again.

Eugene McCarthy

#31. I can still smell the tear gas in the Hilton Hotel.

Eugene McCarthy

#32. The function of liberal Republicans is to shoot the wounded after battle.

Eugene McCarthy

#33. The mortician interviewing the corpses

Eugene McCarthy

#34. I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.

Eugene McCarthy

#35. If you're in the penaut business you learn to think small.

Eugene McCarthy

#36. The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

Eugene McCarthy

#37. Shortly after Senator Eugene J. McCarthy died in 2005 the age of 89, I became an honorary member of the committee starting a fellowship in McCarthy's name at his alma mater, Saint John's University in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Kitty Kelley

#38. The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.

Eugene McCarthy

#39. War is indefensible on every grounds, military and economic and diplomatic and also on moral.

Eugene McCarthy

#40. Remember that the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road.

Eugene McCarthy

#41. In politics one may remain aloof and become irrelevant or get involved and get corrupted.

Eugene McCarthy