Quotes by Herbert Clark Hoover

Wisdom often consists of knowing what to do next.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

Recently, in my opinion, there has been too much talk about the Common Man. It has been dinned into us that this is the Century of the Common Man. The idea seems to be that the Common Man has come into his own at last. But I have never been able to find out who this is. In fact, most Americans will get mad and fight if you try calling them common. . . . I have never met a father and mother who did not want their children to grow up to be uncommon men and women. May it always be so. For the future of America rests not in mediocrity, but in the constant renewal of leadership in every phase of our national life.

A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.

The American system of rugged individualism.

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.

If America is to be run by the people, it is the people who must think. And we do not need to put on sackcloth and ashes to think. Nor should our minds work like a sundial which records only sunshine. Our thinking must square against some lessons of history, some principles of government and morals, if we would preserve the rights and dignity of men to which this nation is dedicated.

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.

New discoveries in science . . . will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who would still adventure.

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.