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
I am firmly opposed to the government entering into any business the major purpose of which is competition with our citizens... for the Federal Government deliberately to go out to build up and expand... a power and manufacturing business is to break down the initiative and enterprise of the American people; it is the destruction of equality of opportunity amongst our people, it is the negation of the ideals upon which our civilization has been based.
You cannot extend the mastery of government over the daily life of a people without somewhere making it master of people's souls and thoughts.... Every step in that direction poisons the very roots of liberalism. It poisons political equality, free speech, free press, and equality of opportunity. It is the road not to more liberty but to less liberty.
Freedom requires that government keep the channels of competition and opportunity open, prevent monopolies, economic abuse and domination.
Our individualism is rooted in our very nature. It is based on conviction born of experience. Equal opportunity, the demand for a fair chance, became the formula of American Individualism because it is the method of American achievement.
Progress will march if we hold an abiding faith in the intelligence, the initiative, the character, the courage, and the divine touch in the individual. We can safeguard these ends if we give to each individual that opportunity for which the spirit of America stands.
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.
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.
This is not a showman's job. I will not step out of character.
Wisdom oft times consists of knowing what to do next.
If we could have but one generation of properly born, trained, educated, and healthy children, a thousand other problems of government would vanish.
The durability of free speech and free press rests on the simple concept that it search for the truth and tell the truth.
Honest differences of views and honest debate are not disunity. They are the vital process of policy making among free men.
No public man can be just a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's land between honesty and dishonesty.