Herbert Hoover

Free government is the most difficult of all government. But it is everlastingly true that the plain people will make fewer mistakes than any other group of men, no matter how powerful.

The United States fully accepts the profound truth that our own progress, prosperity, and peace are interlocked with the progress, prosperity, and peace of all humanity.

At 15 years of age, I left school to practice the profession of Office Boy in a business firm in Salem, Oregon.

Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

When all the routines and details and the human bores get on our nerves, we just yearn to go away from here to somewhere else. To go fishing is a sound, a valid, and an accepted reason for an escape. It requires no explanation.

My earliest realization of the stir of national life was the torch parade in the Garfield campaign. On that occasion, I was not only allowed out that night, but I saw the lamps being filled and lighted.

With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.

Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.

There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.

The thing I enjoyed most were visits from children. They did not want public office.

Peace can be promoted by the limitation of arms and by the creation of the instrumentality for peaceful settlement of controversies. But it will become a reality only through self-restraint and active effort in friendliness and helpfulness.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community - not from governmental restraints.

Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

Public health service should be as fully organized and as universally incorporated into our governmental system as is public education. The returns are a thousand fold in economic benefits, and infinitely more in reduction of suffering and promotion of human happiness.

The opportunities of America opened out to me the public schools. They carried me to the professional training of an American university. I began by working with my own hands for my daily bread.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.

We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.

Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.