Quotes from Hubert Humphrey

The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbour.

Fortunately, the time has long passed when people liked to regard the United States as some kind of melting pot, taking men and women from every part of the world and converting them into standardized, homogenized Americans. We are, I think, much more mature and wise today. Just as we welcome a world of diversity, so we glory in an America of diversity -- an America all the richer for the many different and distinctive strands of which it is woven.

Never give up on anybody.

The great challenge which faces us is to assure that, in our society of big-ness, we do not strangle the voice of creativity, that the rules of the game do not come to overshadow its purpose, that the grand orchestration of society leaves ample room for the man who marches to the music of another drummer.

To be realistic today is to be visionary. To be realistic is to be starry-eyed.

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.

The moral test of government is how it treats people in the dawn of life, the children, in the twilight of life, the aged, and in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy, and the handicapped

Racism is racism—and there is no room in America for racism of any color. And we must reject calls for racism, whether they come from a throat that is white or one that is black.