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Hubert H. Humphrey Quotes

Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th Vice President of the United States from 1965 to 1969. Humphrey twice served in the United States Senate, representing Minnesota from 1949 to 1964 and 1971 to 1978. He was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1968 presidential election, losing to Republican nominee Richard Nixon.

Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota and helped run his father's pharmacy before returning to academia. He earned a master's degree from Louisiana State University and worked for the Works Progress Administration, the Minnesota war service program, and the War Manpower Commission. In 1943, Humphrey became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. Humphrey helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party in 1944, and in 1945, won election as mayor of Minneapolis. Humphrey served as mayor from 1945 to 1948 and co-founded the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, Humphrey won election to the Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.

Humphrey served three terms in the Senate from 1949 to 1964 and was the Democratic Majority Whip from 1961 to 1964. During his tenure, Humphrey was the lead author of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, introduced the first initiative to create the Peace Corps, sponsored the clause of the McCarran Act to threaten concentration camps for 'subversives', proposed making Communist Party membership a felony, and chaired the Select Committee on Disarmament. Humphrey unsuccessfully sought his party's presidential nomination in the 1952 and 1960 Democratic primaries. After Lyndon B. Johnson acceded to the presidency he chose Humphrey to be his running mate, and the Democratic ticket was elected in the landslide 1964 election.

After Johnson made the surprise announcement that he would not seek reelection in March 1968, Humphrey launched his campaign for the presidency. Humphrey, who was loyal to the Johnson administration's policies on the Vietnam War as Vice President, saw opposition from many within his own party and avoided the primaries to focus on receiving the delegates of non-primary states at the Democratic Convention. Humphrey's delegate strategy succeeded in clinching the nomination, and he chose Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate. In the 1968 election, Humphrey nearly matched Nixon's tally in the popular vote but lost the electoral vote by a wide margin. After being defeated in the 1968 election, Humphrey returned to the Senate and served in that chamber until his death in 1978.

✵ 27. May 1911 – 13. January 1978   •   Other names Hubert Horatio Humphrey
Hubert H. Humphrey photo
Hubert H. Humphrey: 18   quotes 2   likes

Famous Hubert H. Humphrey Quotes

“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287.

Hubert H. Humphrey Quotes about freedom

“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against the tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Quoted in Guns magazine "Know Your Lawmaker" column, p. 4. (Feb. 1960)

“For all of us here, for the millions who have sent us, for the whole two billion members of the human family, our land is now, more than ever before, the last best hope on earth. And I know that we can, and I know that we shall began [sic] here the fuller and richer realization of that hope — that promise of a land where all men are truly free and equal, and each man uses his freedom and equality wisely well.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the Democratic National Convention http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huberthumphey1948dnc.html (July 14, 1948), Convention Hall, Philadelphia.

“The vast number of titles which are published each year—all of them are to the good, even if some of them may annoy or even repel us for a time. For none of us would trade freedom of expression and of ideas for the narrowness of the public censor. America is a free market for people who have something to say, and need not fear to say it.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the National Book Awards ceremony in New York City (March 8, 1967), reported in The New York Times (March 9, 1967), p. 42.

Hubert H. Humphrey Quotes

“The test we must set for ourselves is not to march alone but to march in such a way that others will wish to join us.”

Hubert H. Humphrey
Way

“In real life, unlike in Shakespeare, the sweetness of the rose depends upon the name it bears. Things are not only what they are. They are, in very important respects, what they seem to be.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Speech, March 26, 1966, Washington, D.C., quoted in Robert Andrews, The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993)

Life , Dependency

“I wish to suggest that ample opportunity does exist for dissent, for protest, and for nonconformity. But I must also say that the right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the National Student Council (1965)

“To those who say — My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say — To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the Democratic National Convention http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huberthumphey1948dnc.html (July 14, 1948), Convention Hall, Philadelphia.

Time

“We can't use a double standard — there’s no room for double standards in American politics — for measuring our own and other people's policies. Our demands for democratic practices in other lands will be no more effective than the guarantee of those practices in our own country.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the Democratic National Convention http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/huberthumphey1948dnc.html (July 14, 1948), Convention Hall, Philadelphia.

People , Country

“I learned more about economics from one South Dakota dust storm than I did in all my years at college.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Quoted in "THE CONGRESS: Education of a Senator," http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,780085,00.html Time magazine ( 17 January 1949 http://books.google.com/books?id=8-jVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22I+learned+more+about+economics+from+one+south+dakota+dust+storm+than+I+did+in+all+my+years+at+college%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage)

Learning

“The Senate is a place filled with goodwill and good intentions, and if the road to hell is paved with them, then it's a pretty good detour.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Reported in Newsweek (January 23, 1978), p. 23.

Hell

“I had no money to buy books, so between classes and work, I haunted the library. I even tutored in French with a sliding scale of payment: twenty dollars for an A, fifteen for a B, ten for a C, five for a D.”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Of his university years. From Hubert H. Humphrey, The Education of a Public Man: My Life and Politics 43 (1976)

Money , Books

“The story of the labor movement needs to be taught in every school in this land… America is a living testimonial to what free men and women, organized in free democratic trade unions can do to make a better life … we ought to be proud of it!”

Hubert H. Humphrey

Address to the 1977 Minnesota State AFL-CIO Convention.

Life , Women , Men , School

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