Herbert Clark Hoover (August 10, 1874-October 20, 1964) was the 31st President of the United States, 1929-33; Secretary of Commerce under both Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, 1921-28; served on the council of the American Relief Administration, 1919-21; U.S. Food Administrator during World War I, 1917-19; Commissioner for Belgian Relief, 1915-19; Chairman of the American Relief Committee in London, 1914-15; married Lou Henry, 1899; successful mining engineer, 1895-1914; graduated from Stanford University, 1895.
On Monday, March 4, 1929, in his Inaugural Address, President Herbert Clark Hoover entreated:
<This occasion is not alone the administration of the most sacred oath which can be assumed by an American citizen. It is a dedication and consecration under God to the highest office in service of our people. I assume this trust in the humility of knowledge that only through the guidance of Almighty Providence can I hope to discharge its ever-increasing burdens....
Superficial observers seem to find no destiny for our abounding increase in population, in wealth and power....They fail to realize that because of our abounding prosperity our youth are pressing more and more into our institutions of learning; that our people are seeking a larger vision through art, literature, science, and travel; that they are moving toward stronger moral and spiritual life....
Ours is a progressive people, but with a determination that progress must be based upon the foundation of experience. Ill-considered remedies for our faults brings only penalties after them. But if we hold the faith of the men in our mighty past who created these ideals, we shall leave them heightened and strengthened for our children....
In the presence of my countrymen, mindful of the solemnity of this occasion, knowing what the task means and the responsibility which it involves, I beg your tolerance, your aid, and your cooperation. I ask the help of Almighty God in this service to my country to which you have called me.> 1874HH001
In an address at Valley Forge, May 30, 1931, President Hoover stated:
<If those few thousand men endured that long winter of privation and suffering, humiliated by the despair of their countrymen, and deprived of support save their own indomitable will, yet held their countrymen to the faith, and by that holding held fast the freedom of America, what right have we to be of little faith?> 1874HH002
On Monday, April 27, 1931, in speaking before the Gridiron Club, President Herbert Hoover stated:
<If, by the grace of God, we have passed the worst of this storm, the future months will be easy. If we shall be called upon to endure more of this period, we must gird ourselves for even greater effort....
If we can maintain this courage and resolution we shall have written this new chapter in national life in terms to which our whole idealism has aspired. May God grant to us the spirit and strength to carry through to the end.> 1874HH003
On Sunday, October 18, 1931, in an address which began a nation-wide drive to aid the private relief agencies during the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover expressed:
<Time and time again the American people have demonstrated a spiritual quality, a capacity for unity of action, of generosity, a certainty of results in time of emergency that have made them great in the annals of the history of all nations. This is the time and this is the occasion when we must arouse that idealism, that spirit....
This civilization and this great complex, which we call American life, is builded and can alone survive upon the translation into individual action of that fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago.
Part of our national suffering today is from failure to observe these primary yet inexorable laws of human relationship. Modern society can not survive with the defense of Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?"> 1874HH004
On Thursday, September 15, 1932, President Herbert Hoover addressed the leaders of the "national drive" committee for voluntary relief agencies at the White House:
<Our tasks are definite....that we maintain the spiritual impulses in our people for generous giving and generous service-in the spirit that each is his brother's keeper....
Many a family today is carrying a neighbor family over the trough of this depression not alone with material aid but with that encouragement which maintains courage and faith.> 1874HH005
On October 4, 1932, in a campaign speech at Des Moines, Iowa, President Herbert Hoover stated:
<We won this battle to protect our people at home. We held the Gibraltar of world stability. The world today has a chance. It is growing in strength. Let that man who complains that things could not be worse thank God for this victory.> 1874HH006
On October 31, 1932, in an address at Madison Square Garden in New York, President Herbert Hoover warned of the collectivist color of the New Deal:
<To enter upon a series of deep changes, to embark upon this inchoate new deal which has been propounded in this campaign would be to undermine and destroy our American system....
No man who has not occupied my position in Washington can fully realize the constant battle which must be carried on against incompetence, corruption, tyranny of government expanded into business activities....
Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.> 1874HH007
In The Challenge of Liberty, 1934, Herbert Clark Hoover declared:
<While I can make no claim for having introduced the term, "rugged individualism," I should be proud to have invented it. It has been used by American leaders for over a half-century in eulogy of those God-fearing men and women of honesty whose stamina and character and fearless assertion of rights led them to make their own way in life.> 1874HH008
On September 17, 1935, in San Diego, California, Herbert Hoover expressed:
<Our Constitution is not alone the working plan of a great Federation of States under representative government. There is embedded in it also the vital principles of the American system of liberty. That system is based upon certain inalienable freedoms and protections which in no event the government may infringe and which we call the Bill of Rights.
It does not require a lawyer to interpret those provisions. They are as clear as the Ten Commandments. Among others the freedom of worship, freedom of speech and of the press, the right of peaceable assembly, equality before the law....
In them lies a spiritual right of men. Behind them is the conception which is the highest development of the Christian faith-the conception of individual freedom with brotherhood.> 1874HH009
Herbert Hoover, in 1943, issued a joint statement along with Mrs. Calvin Coolidge, Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt, Mrs. William H. Taft, Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, Alfred Smith, Alfred Landon, James M. Cox, and John W. Davis:
<Menaced by collectivist trends, we must seek revival of our strength in the spiritual foundations which are the bedrock of our republic. Democracy is the outgrowth of the religious conviction of the sacredness of every human life. On the religious side, its highest embodiment is The Bible; on the political side, the Constitution.> 1874HH010
Herbert Hoover stated in an interview with the Scripps-Howard Press, November 19, 1945:
<In ancient times the irrigation of the Tigris and Euphrates Valleys supported probably 10 million people in the kingdoms of Babylon and Nineveh. The deterioration and destruction of their irrigation works by the Mongol invasion centuries ago, and their neglect for ages, are responsible for the shrinkage of the population to about 3,500,000 people in modern Iraq. Some 30 years ago, Sir William Willcocks, an eminent British engineer, completed a study of the restoration of the old irrigation system. He estimated that about 2,800,000 acres of the most fertile land I the world could be recovered at a cost of under $150,000,000.
Some progress has been made under the Iraq government but their lack of financial resources and the delay of war have retarded the work greatly. Some years ago it was proposed that this area should be developed for settlement by Jewish refugees. This did not, however, satisfy the Jewish desire for a homeland...
My own suggestion is that Iraq might be financed to complete this great land development on the consideration that it be made the scene of resettlement of the Arabs from Palestine. This would clear Palestine completely for a large Jewish emigration and colonization. A suggestion of transfer of the Arab people of Palestine was made by the British Labor Party in December, 1944, but no adequate plan was proposed as to where or how they were to go.
There is room for many more Arabs in such a development in Iraq than the total Arabs in Palestine. The soil is more fertile. They would be among their own race which is Arab-speaking and Mohammedan. The Arab population of Palestine would be the gainer from better lands in exchange for their present holdings. Iraq would be the gainer for it badly needs agricultural population...
Today millions of people are being moved from one land to another. If the lands were organized and homes provided, this particular movement could be made the model migration of history. It would be a solution by engineering instead of by conflict.
I realize that the plan offers a challenge both to the statesmanship of the Great Powers as well as to the goodwill of all parties concerned. However, I submit it and it does offer a method of settlement with both honor and wisdom.> 1874HH211
After his term in office, Herbert Clark Hoover sought a reorganization of the United Nations, excluding Communist countries. The speech, delivered to the American Newspaper Publishers Association, was broadcast across the nation on April 27, 1950:
<What the world needs today is a definite, spiritual mobilization of the nations who believe in God against this tide of Red agnosticism. It needs a moral mobilization against the hideous ideas of the police state and human slavery....
I suggest that the United Nations should be reorganized without the Communist nations in it. If that is impractical, then a definite New United Front should be organized of those peoples who disavow communism, who stand for morals and religion, and who love freedom....
It is a proposal based solely upon moral, spiritual and defense foundations. It is a proposal to redeem the concept of the United Nations to the high purpose for which it was created. It is a proposal for moral and spiritual cooperation of God-fearing free nations.
And in rejecting an atheistic other world, I am confident that the Almighty God will be with us.> 1874HH011
Herbert Hoover spoke at a reception in honor of his eightieth birthday in West Branch, Iowa on August 10, 1954. In voicing concern over Socialism, he warned:
<I have witnessed the legacy of war in doubting minds, brutality, crime and debased morals. Moreover, I have witnessed on the ground in 20 nations the workings of the philosophy of that anti-Christ, Karl Marx.
After these long years and from all these experiences, there rises constantly in my mind the forces which make for progress and those which may corrode away the safeguards of freedom in America. I want to say something about these forces but I shall endeavor to do so, not in the tones of Jeremiah but in the spirit of Saint Paul....
Our Founding Fathers did not invent the priceless boon of individual freedom and respect for the dignity of men. That great gift to mankind sprang from the Creator and not from governments.
The Founding Fathers, with superb genius, welded together the safeguards of these freedoms....Today the Socialist virus and poison gas generated by Karl Marx and Friedreich Engels have spread into every nation on the earth.
Their dogma is absolute materialism which defies truth and religious faith. Their poisons are of many sorts. The preservation of the safeguards of liberty makes it imperative that we give heed to their every variety....
A nation is strong or weak, it thrives or perishes upon what it believes to be true. If our youth are rightly instructed in the faith of our fathers; in the traditions of our country; in the dignity of each individual man, then our power will be stronger than any weapon of destruction that man can devise.
And now as to this whole gamut of Socialist infections, I say to you...God has blessed us with another wonderful word-heritage. The great documents of that heritage are not from Karl Marx. They are from the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Within them alone can the safeguards of freedom survive....
These new frontiers give us other blessings. Not only do they expand our living but also they open new opportunities and new areas of adventure and enterprise. They open new vistas of beauty. They unfold the wonders of the atom and the heavens. Daily they prove the reality of an all-wise Supreme Giver of Law.> 1874HH012
Herbert Clark Hoover explained:
<The principle thing we can do, if we really want to make the world over again, is to try the use of the word "old" again. It was the "old" things that made this country the great nation it is.
There is the old virtue of religious faith. There are the old virtues of integrity and truth. There is the old virtue of incorruptible service and honor in public service.> 1874HH013
<Freedom is an open window through which pours the sunlight of the human spirit and of human dignity. With the preservation of these moral and spiritual qualities and with God's grace will come further greatness for our country.> 1874HH014
Herbert Clark Hoover, who was a member of the Society of Friends, or Quakers, stated:
<The whole inspiration of our civilization springs from the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the prophets. To read the Bible for these fundamentals is a necessity of American life.> 1874HH015
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American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1874HH001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, March 4, 1929, Monday, in his Inaugural Address. Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States-From George Washington 1789 to Richard Milhous Nixon 1969 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office; 91st Congress, 1st Session, House Document 91-142, 1969), pp. 225-233. Davis Newton Lott, The Inaugural Addresses of the American Presidents (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), pp. 223, 229. Charles E. Rice, The Supreme Court and Public Prayer (New York: Fordham University Press, 1964), pp. 190-191. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., The Chief Executive (NY: Chelsea House Publishers, 1965), pp. 250, 259. Benjamin Weiss, God in American History: A Documentation of America's Religious Heritage (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1966), p. 132. Willard Cantelon, Money Master of the World (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1976), p. 121. J. Michael Sharman, J.D., Faith of the Fathers (Culpeper, Virginia: Victory Publishing, 1995), p. 95.
1874HH002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, May 30, 1931, in an address at Valley Forge. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), p. 35.
1874HH003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, April 27, 1931, in an address before the Gridiron Club. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), p. 64.
1874HH004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, October 18, 1931, in an address beginning a nation-wide drive to aid the private relief agencies during the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), p. 151.
1874HH005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, September 15, 1932, in addressing the leaders of the "national drive" committee for voluntary relief agencies at the White House. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), pp. 174-175.
1874HH006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, October 4, 1932, in a campaign speech at Des Moines, Iowa. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), p. 283.
1874HH007. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, October 31, 1932, in an address at Madison Square Garden in New York. Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover-The Great Depression 1929-1941 (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1952), pp. 335-343.
1874HH008. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, 1934, Herbert Clark Hoover, The Challenge of Liberty (NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934), p. 54. John Bartlett, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1855, 1980), p. 750.
1874HH009. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, September 17, 1935, in a speech in San Diego, California. Charles Hurd, ed., A Treasury of Great American Speeches (NY: Hawthorne Books, 1959), pp. 229-231.
1874HH010. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, "Our Christian Heritage," Letter from Plymouth Rock (Marlborough, NH: The Plymouth Rock Foundation), p. 7.
1874HH010. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, November 19, 1945, in an interview with the Scripps-Howard Press. http://cojs.org/cojswiki/President_Herbert_Hoover_in_an_Interview_with_the_ Scripps-Howard_Press,_Nov._19,_1945.
1874HH011. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, April 27, 1950, in a speech to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Charles Hurd, ed., A Treasury of Great American Speeches (NY: Hawthorne Books, 1959), pp. 289-291.
1874HH012. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover, August 10, 1954, at a reception in honor of his eightieth birthday in West Branch, Iowa. Lillian W. Kay, ed., The Ground on Which We Stand-Basic Documents of American History (NY: Franklin Watts., Inc, 1969), p. 276-872.
1874HH013. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover. Charles Wallis, ed., Our American Heritage (NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1970), p. 207.
1874HH014. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover. Charles Wallis, ed., Our American Heritage (NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 1970), p. 16.
1874HH015. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Herbert Clark Hoover. Charles E. Jones, The Books You Read (Harrisburg, PA: Executive Books, 1985), p. 116.