Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hooverwas the 31st President of the United States. He was a professional mining engineer and was raised as a Quaker. A Republican, Hoover served as head of the U.S. Food Administration during World War I, and became internationally known for humanitarian relief efforts in war-time Belgium. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business under the rubric "economic modernization."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionUS President
Date of Birth10 August 1874
CityWest Branch, IA
CountryUnited States of America
My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor.
I returned to the white House after midnight more depressed than ever before. I had long since arranged to attend the World Series in Philadelphia the next day. Although I like baseball, I kept this engagement only because I felt that my presence at a sporting event might be a gesture of reassurance to a country suffering from a severe attack of 'jitters.'
You convey too great a compliment when you say that I have earned the right to the presidential nomination. No man can establish such an obligation upon any part of the American people. My country owes me no debt. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope. My whole life has taught me what America means. I am indebted to my country beyond any human power to repay.
I was not able to work up much enthusiasm over the ball game, and in the midst of it I was handed a note informing me of the sudden death of Senator Dwight morrow. He had proved a great pillar of strength in the senate and his death was a great loss to the country and to me. I left the ballpark with the chant of the crowd ringing in my ears, 'We Want Beer!'
It is those moral and spiritual qualities which rise alone in free men, which will fulfill the meaning of the word American. And with them will come centuries of further greatness to our country.
I have on numerous occasions, as you know, expressed my sympathy in the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine and, despite the set-backs caused by the disorders there during the last few years, I have been heartened by the progress which has been made and by the remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in that country.
Many women are now holding posts of grave responsibility in city and country and state and nation, and their number must be greatly increased.
I am willing to pledge myself that if the time should ever come that the voluntary agencies of the country together with the localand state governments are unable to find resources with which to prevent hunger and sufferingI will ask the aid of every resource of the Federal Government.... I have the faith in the American people that such a day will not come.
[N]o country can squander itself to prosperity on the ruin of its taxpayers.
Any practice of business which would dominate the country by its own selfish interest is a destruction of equality of opportunity. Government in business, except in emergency, is also a destruction of equal opportunity and the incarnation of tyranny through bureaucracy.
The fundamental business of the country, that is production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis.
Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of "emergency". It was the tactic of Lenin, Hitler, and Mussolini. In the collectivist sweep over a dozen minor countries of Europe, it was the cry of men striving to get on horseback. And "emergency" became the justification of the subsequent steps. This technique of creating emergency is the greatest achievement that demagoguery attains.
We have not yet reached the goal but... we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation.
Wisdom consists not so much in knowing what to do in the ultimate as knowing what to do next.