Herbert Hoover Quotes

There's something just so kind of smooth about politicians.

I will never be so merely to obtain the reputation of a cunning politician, a character I neither admire nor esteem.

Why the best men do not get into politics.

People really don’t care if politicians attack each other with untrue stories. They figure if you don’t want to get hurt, you shouldn’t have filed for office. They figure whatever happens to us, our lives will be better than theirs.

If you’re going to be in national politics you have to maintain a thick skin.

I know I'd be an absolutely horrendous politician.

There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.

Why should one have to be sad, ugly, and boring to go into politics these days.

A man who aspires to any high office should have three qualifications: first, he should be prepared to support the constitution of his country; second, he should have a special aptitude for the office he desires; and third, he should have virtue and justice as they are understood by his fellow citizens.

You don’t become a statesman unless you are first a good politician.

I was assailed so bitterly that I hardly knew whether I was running for the Presidency or the penitentiary.

Mr. [Judah P.] Benjamin, unquestionably, will have great influence with the President [Jefferson Davis], for he has studied his character most carefully. He will be familiar not only with his "likes" but especially his "dislikes.

It has now become the doctrine of a large class of politicians that political honesty is unnecessary, slow, subversive of a man's interests, and incompatible with quick onward movement.

I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness - not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.

[Commenting on negative campaigning:] On the eve of the first Tuesday in November, once again we are faced with the ugly paradox of 30-second-spot democracy: to prove they are worthy of governing us in all that we hold dear, America's politicians must behave in a way that proves they aren't.

My God. What is there about this place [the White House] that a man should ever want to get into it?

In public life, a man whose political principles have any decided character and who has energy enough to give them effect must always expect to encounter political hostility from those of adverse principles.

It’s attack advertising. It’s dirty tricks advertising. It’s dishonest and lowers the level of the political conversation.

You're going to find that, intellectually, the [governors] as a whole are a cut or two above what they were 10 or 20 years ago.

Mothers may still want their sons to grow up to become President, but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

[Referring to Ronald Reagan:] When you meet the President, you ask yourself, "How did it ever occur to anybody that he should be governor much less President?

If you're in public life, a certain percentage of what you do must be done on television.

A politician will do anything to keep his job—even become a patriot.

I don’t think that you have to run down someone’s reputation in order to run for the Presidency.

Lyndon Johnson might have been the greatest vote counter ever in Congress, not because of his math skills but because of his unrivaled ability to read his fellow politicians and his utter ruthlessness in using what he knew.