Next to religion, baseball has had a greater impact on our American way of life than any other American institution.
— Herbert Hoover
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.
America means far more than a continent bounded by two oceans. It is more than pride of military power, glory in war, or in victory. It means more than vast expanse of farms, of great factories or mines, magnificent cities, or millions of automobiles and radios.
There is no employing class, no working class, no farming class. You may pigeonhole a man or woman as a farmer or a worker or a professional man or an employer or even a banker. But the son of the farmer will be a doctor or a worker or even a banker, and his daughter a teacher. The son of a worker will be an employer - or maybe president.
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.
True liberal government is founded on the emancipation of men.
Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.
The Ritz Hotel has never yet provided game of such wondrous flavor as the bird plucked and half-cooked over the small boys' camp fire.
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.
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.
Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.
There are only three ways to meet the unpaid bills of a nation. The first is taxation. The second is repudiation. The third is inflation.
Peace can be contributed to by respect for our ability in defense.
Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the public Treasury.
It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.
Let me remind you that credit is the lifeblood of business, the lifeblood of prices and jobs.
It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow... that are the aftermath of war.
At 17, I went to Stanford University to study engineering. My time was occupied with the required reading and the extracurricular duties of managing the baseball and football teams and earning my way.
The human animal originally came from out-of-doors. When spring begins to move in his bones, he just must get out again. Moreover, as civilization, cement pavements, office buildings, radios have overwhelmed us, the need for regeneration has increased, and the impulses are even stronger.
I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries - the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.
We must have government that builds stamina into communities and men. That makes men instead of mendicants.
Freedom does not die from frontal attack. It dies because men in power no longer believe in a system based upon liberty.
The spirit of liberalism is to create free men; it is not the regimentation of men.
I am no supporter of factory labor for children, but I have never joined with those who clamored against proper work of children on farms outside their school hours.
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.
One civilization after another has been wrecked upon the attempt to secure sufficient leadership from a single group or class.
The engineer performs many public functions from which he gets only philosophical satisfactions. Most people do not know it, but he is an economic and social force.
The President is not only the leader of a party, he is the President of the whole people. He must interpret the conscience of America. He must guide his conduct by the idealism of our people.
Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.
The worst evil of disregard for some law is that it destroys respect for all law.
This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.
The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.
Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.
The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.
At 15 years of age, I left school to practice the profession of Office Boy in a business firm in Salem, Oregon.
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.
Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.
Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.
The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.
A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.
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.
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.
Self-government can succeed only through an instructed electorate.
The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers.
The glory of the nation rests in the character of her men. And character comes from boyhood. Thus, every boy is a challenge to his elders.
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.
With impressive proof on all sides of magnificent progress, no one can rightly deny the fundamental correctness of our economic system.
New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.
America - a great social and economic experiment, noble in motive and far-reaching in purpose.
If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.
