Quotes by Eugene McCarthy

“He's like a football coach who's smart enough to win the game and dumb enough to think it's important.”

“The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honour the territorial imperative.”

“Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game and dumb enough to think it's important.”

“It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.”

“He's like a football coach who's smart enough to win the game and dumb enough to think it's important.”

“Have you ever tried to split sawdust?”

“[T]here should be absolute freedom of expression without any kind of restraint or limitation. This position is generally defended by the uncritical assertion that every person has the right to expr...”

“The real basis of freedom of speech and of expression is not, however, the right of a person to say what he thinks or what he wishes to say but the right and need of all persons to learn the truth....”

“There is danger in the concentration of control in the television and radio networks, especially in the large television and radio stations; danger in the concentration of ownership in the press… a...”

“The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is workin...”

“The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”

“Remember that the worst accidents occur in the middle of the road.”

“There is only one thing to do — take it to the country!”

“We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.”

“I'm kind of an accidental instrument, really, through which I hope that the judgment and the will of this nation can be expressed.”

“The maple tree that nightWithout a wind or rainLet go its leavesBecause its time had come.”

“Now it is certain.There is no magic stone.No secret to be found.One must goWith the mind's winnowed learning.”

“The glove has been thrown to the ground,The last choice of weapons made.A book for one thought.A poem for one line.A line for one word.”

“Broken things are powerful.Things about to break are stronger still.The last shot from the brittle bow is truest.”

“I have left Act I, for involutionAnd Act II. There, mired in complexityI cannot write Act III.”