McCarthy Quotes

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

[Joseph R.] McCarthy was a fascist of the worst type. The only thing American about him was that he was born in Wisconsin.

The aliens who control our press and radio and the boob tubes spattered their slime over the country. Swarms of the ignorant and neurotic little shysters whom we call "intellectuals" issued from the doors of the colleges and universities, shrieking and spitting as is their wont. And all that had its effect. But the conspiracy was able to silence McCarthy

I think there are periods in this country when behavior is abhorrent: McCarthy, Watergate, Bill Clinton. It's just a question of how the checks and balances in the American system work and how leaders stand up to it or don't stand up to it.

The McCarthy boys, at the proper moment, gave orders to fire upon the advancing enemy.

I just will not—I refuse—to get into the gutter with that guy.

If there had been a charismatic figure in the United States who could mobilize fears, anger, racism, a sense of loss of the future that belongs to us, this country could be in real danger. We're lucky that there never has been an honest, charismatic figure. McCarthy was too much of a thug, you know? Nixon was too crooked. Trump, I think, is too much of a clown. So, we've been lucky.

There is a hate layer of opinion and emotion in America. There will be other McCarthys to come who will be hailed as its heroes.

When the wind is right, a faint odor of kerosene is exhaled from Senator McCarthy.

Resolved, that the conduct of the Senator from Wisconsin, Mr. McCarthy, is unbecoming a Member of the United States Senate, is contrary to senatorial traditions, and tends to bring the Senate into disrepute, and such conduct is hereby condemned.

When they finally decided to do McCarthy in, Nixon was the fellow they selected, and he was perfectly willing to turn on his conservative friends and cut their throats….Nixon was a superb hatchet man.

A man has to be Joe McCarthy to be called ruthless. All a woman has to do is put you on hold.

Joe McCarthy was the local town drunk in a business suit.

Nobody from the CIA is going to account for their loyalty to [Senator Joseph] McCarthy.

I will not compromise with my conscience. I will cast my vote to protect the liberties of our people.

The most unlovely political character in our history since Aaron Burr.

The United States Senate has long enjoyed worldwide respect as the greatest deliberative body in the world. But recently that deliberative character has too often been debased to the level of a forum of hate and character assassination sheltered by the shield of congressional immunity.

If Senator McCarthy believed those things when he said them about the Senate Committee then there is pretty solid ground to say that he ought to be expelled from the Senate for moral incapacity. If he put those things in there honestly believing them to be true, then he has evidently suffered gigantic mental delusions, and it may be argued with much force, that he should be expelled from the Senate for mental difficulty.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

While nobody likes a watchdog, and for that reason many investigating committees are unpopular, I thank God for men who, in the face of public denouncement and ridicule go loyally on in their work of exposing the pinks, the lavenders and the reds who have sought refuge beneath the wings of the American eagle …

They have the Republican Party of President Eisenhower. They have the Republican Party of Senator Taft. They have the Republican Party of Senator Morse. And somewhere—way out behind the Chicago Tribune tower is—the Republican Party of Senator McCarthy with one foot heavy in Greece and the other foot in Secretary Dulles' security files. It makes bipartisanship right difficult. We Democrats need to know which one of the Republican Parties to be bipartisan with; and which one of the Republican Parties to be bipartisan against.

I just don't want their support. McCarthy said he apologized to the American people for supporting me; that is just the way I want it and I wish he would say it again.

I think McCarthy was a menace... because he corrupted the ethics of American conservatives, and that corruption leads to the situation we have now. It gave the conservatives the habit of appeasing the forces of the hysterical right... and appeasing them knowingly, expediently. I think that was the original sin of the conservative movement, and we [conservatives] are all suffering from it.

I was brought up in a home where the Secretary of State was not the subject of partisan debate.

You are becoming a left wing McCarthyite …. The FBI has better things to do than to listen to our conversations.